Each year, the Chicago Police Department seizes about 10,000 illegal guns and arrests thousands of people for illegal gun possession. Yet guns remain plentiful and easy to acquire, and young people who live in dangerous neighborhoods say they feel unsafe without them.

Now, one group is trying a different tactic, telling those youths: Keep your guns if you must, but learn how to handle them safely.

The approach uses the philosophy of harm reduction, better known in the arenas of drug addiction and public health. Harm reduction aims to be practical and nonjudgmental, offering help without insisting on abstinence — for example, giving clean needles to heroin users or condoms to teenagers.

In much the same way, Stick Talk, a Chicago collective, has taken to teaching small groups of teenagers and young adults skills like first aid for gunshot wounds and how to avoid accidental discharges.

“We found out that a lot of the stuff they teach our children are not working,” said Malik Cole, 27, who conducts Stick Talk workshops in a state-run juvenile lockup where he himself was detained as a youth. “Kids still dying.”

Stick Talk, he said, asked young people what they wanted to learn “to help them survive in life.”