CHARLOTTE, N.C. — With school underway for students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) district, safety is top of mind.

CMS tells us they found 31 firearms on district campuses last school year.

This summer, the district announced plans to roll out body scanners for grades K-8 and middle schools this year, as they started to do this past spring in high schools.

A former CMS dad wants to promote his message, "Life Over Violence Everyday."

Bernel Berry started the organization 1Love. His goal is to steer kids in the right direction.

Berry's daughter just graduated from a CMS high school last year. Although she’s now moved on, his mission stays the same.

“When you have the passion, it doesn’t matter if your kids are long gone. You still care about all of those children that [are] still there,” he said.

Over the summer, he was out hanging up his signs around schools and nearby communities that read, “Life Over Violence Everyday."

“People want to see you on a regular basis, that’s how you change the mindset,” Berry said.

He’s specifically focused on West Charlotte High School, where he feels there needs to be more attention.

Last year, a student fired a gun outside of the high school.

Berry says he’s reached out to the high school to try to partner together.

We reached out to the district about Berry’s organization. They did not respond to a request. We reached out to the district earlier this year about his organization as well.

After we first reached out, the district said while they were aware of his organization, there were no plans in place to partner.

Berry hopes to get a partnership going this school year.

“So I am hoping this year we can work together to help put an end to this,” he said. "We can’t be naive. We know, there’s a fact that we’re gonna have some trouble this year. We just hope and we pray and we try to stay positive to hope that there would be none, but of course we have to be realistic.”