While it likely comes as no surprise to most readers, a recent study suggests that government-mandates that law-abiding gun owners always secure their firearms when “not in use”—usually unloaded, separate from ammunition, and either in a safe or with a device like a trigger lock—appears to do little to increase storing firearms safely.
The study, published in June in Crime and Delinquency by Sage Journals, exhibits quite a bit of anti-gun bias. It refers to “gun violence” as being “a significant public health issue in the United States, noting “more than 46,000 Americans lost their lives from gun-related harm” in 2023. And while it admits more than half are due to suicide, it fails to note that this tragic fact has far more to do with how we diagnose and treat mental health than it does firearms.
The study then mentions that 463 fatalities were “attributed to unintentional gun injuries.” Accidental injuries and fatalities involving firearms are what firearm safety—which can include safe storage practices—is meant to address. And while 463 accidental fatalities are too many, it is roughly 1% of the total number of firearm-related deaths.
The rest of the fatalities are crime-related—many of which include justifiable homicide where crime victims or police are forced to use deadly force with a firearm in order to protect their lives or the lives of others—which is a criminal justice issue, not a public health issue.
Sadly, the study also repeats the false claim by anti-gun extremists that “firearms are now the leading cause of death for American children.” NRA-ILA has previously debunked this lie, as has the Washington Post.
All that said, the study does suggest some interesting points.
The study received completed surveys from 1,078 self-reported gun owners, asking questions about guns owned, how they were acquired, training owners have received, how they store their firearms and other “safety precautions” taken, etc. General demographic questions were also asked.
What was revealed, according to the survey responses, was that older gun owners “were less likely to store their firearms securely” than others. On the other hand, those who had a child or children living in their house … were more likely to store their firearms securely than those who did not,” and those with some form of safety training “were more likely to report using a secure mechanism of firearm storage than those who were untrained.”
On that last point, the authors note that having received training “was the strongest predictor of secure firearm storage,” adding, “Interestingly, state gun storage laws were found to be unrelated to gun owners’ use of secure firearm storage.”
In spite of the anti-gun bias exhibited by the authors, they do come to a conclusion we won’t try to dispute … for the most part.
Storage mandates, in their opinion, do little to encourage gun owners to store their firearms in a particular manner. They believe that exposure to firearm safety courses will lead to more “use of secure storage mechanisms.” The authors suggest lawmakers should focus energy on promoting greater access to safety training as well as storage devices, with the implication that this could be achieved through government funding.
That’s not a bad idea, even if it will do little to nothing with regard to the fatalities involving firearms that are a result of suicide or crime. What we would caution against, however, is relying on the government to develop and implement safety training programs for the general public.
NRA, as well as others, have already developed countless safety training programs for virtually any level of gun owner, whether it be someone just learning to shoot, a former Navy SEAL, or someone in between. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, and we all know how expensive, inefficient, and unnecessarily complicated things can get whenever the government gets involved, to say nothing of politics creeping into the equation, as it certainly would in an anti-gun administration.
Another caveat we would offer is that while it is a good idea to heavily promote safety courses currently available, mandates immediately raise constitutional red flags. Don’t forget that the modern Second Amendment Renaissance that began with District of Columbia v. Heller saw the U.S. Supreme Court invalidate a D.C. “safe storage” law that effectively made even lawfully possessed guns within the home useless for “immediate self-defense.” Some anti-gun states also mandate taking some sort of course before being able to lawfully acquire a firearm. As with storage mandates, NRA does not believe these “one size fits all” requirements are likely to be effective and are more likely to serve as a barrier to owning a gun.
As for devices to secure firearms, if they fit into a gun owner’s safe storage plan, maybe there should be incentives for acquiring them. There have been a variety of programs to encourage gun owners to purchase or receive them via tax deductions and tax holidays, and many groups simply give away devices. Because of federal law, handguns purchased from a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) either come with a device (often referred to as a “trigger lock”) meant to prevent unauthorized users from firing the gun, or a purchaser must be offered one.
Using such a device, however, is not mandated under federal law, nor should it be.
How one stores a firearm is up to the individual gun owner and should be based on his or her specific circumstances. The government should not establish universal storage mandates, and as this study indicates, when such a scheme is put into law, it is likely ineffective, anyway.
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