Guns—Injuries and Fatalities - Safe Storage Of Guns In The Home

If a gun is to be used for self-defense, does it make sense to keep it unloaded and locked? This is a question

TABLE 6.5

Victim self-defense, 1993–2001
Note: Detail may not add to total because of rounding.
SOURCE: "Victim Self-Defense," in "Weapon Use and Violent Crime," National Crime Victimization Survey, 1993–2001, U.S. Department of Justice, September 2003, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/wuvc01.pdf (accessed October 9, 2004)
All victims' responses to violent crime	100%
Offered no resistance	39.3
Took some action	60.5
Used physical force toward offender	13.0
Attacked/threatened offender without a weapon	10.8
Attacked/threatened offender with a gun	0.7
Attacked/threatened offender with other weapon	1.4
Resisted or captured offender	15.0
Scared or warned off offender	4.2
Persuaded or appeased offender	5.5
Escaped/hid/got away	9.8
Got help or gave alarm	3.9
Reacted to pain or emotion	0.3
Other	8.9
Method of resistance unknown	0.2

asked by people who oppose the growing movement to enact safe-storage laws and laws that hold gun owners criminally liable for any injury caused by a child gaining unsupervised access to a gun. While there are no federal child-access prevention (CAP) laws, the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence reported that at least eighteen states and a handful of cities have some kind of CAP law. Gun control advocates are pressing for similar legislation at the federal level.

A pro-gun organization called GunCite (http://www.guncite.com [accessed January 30, 2005]) called CAP legislation "an attack on the legitimate use of firearms for self-defense," said it is unconstitutional at the federal level, and wondered: "If society wants to hold people accountable for genuinely negligent actions or child endangerment, it should do so across the board rather than single out firearms. (For example, far more children drown in private swimming pools than are killed in gun accidents.)" In the same vein, a Detroit Free Press analysis entitled "Trigger Locks May Not Be Solution to Gun Problems" by Dawson Bell (March 29, 2000) quoted gun rights advocate Don Kates: "So the question for the legislature should be: Is a parent criminally responsible for leaving an unlocked container of bleach below the sink?" Opponents of CAP laws say they are an intrusion on parental rights.

Unintentional injuries (primarily from motor vehicle accidents, drowning, fires and burns, firearms, suffocation, falls, and traffic accidents) are the leading cause of death among young children and teenagers. (See Figure 6.3.) A study by Dr. Peter Cummings and colleagues theorized that CAP laws significantly reduced unintentional firearms deaths of children under age fifteen in twelve states where the laws had been in effect for at least one year ("State Gun-Safe-Storage Laws and Child Mortality Due to Firearms," Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 278, no. 13, October 1, 1997). The researchers found that between 1990 and 1994, unintentional shooting deaths in those states were reduced by an average of 23%. The study was criticized because it did not show that compliance with safe-storage laws was responsible for the reduction in shooting deaths. A follow-up study concluded that CAP laws had a significant effect only in Florida, one of three states where the penalty for unsafe storage was a felony rather than a misdemeanor (D. W. Webster and M. Starnes, "Re-Examining the Association between Child Access Prevention Gun Laws and Unintentional Shooting Deaths of Children," Pediatrics, vol. 106, December 2000).

A 2004 study conducted by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association ("Association between Youth-Focused Firearm Laws and Youth Suicides," vol. 292, no. 5, August 4, 2004) concluded that CAP laws are effective in reducing teenage suicides. The study found that up to three hundred teenage suicides have been prevented in the eighteen states that have CAP laws.

Would parents change their gun storage practices because of CAP laws? The National Rifle Association (NRA) contends that responsible parents already practice safe storage. Yet evidence shows that while many gun owners report following safety rules, a sizable minority do not. A 1996 study (Y. D. Senturia et al., "Gun Storage Patterns in U.S. Homes with Children," Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine, vol. 150, no. 3, March 1996) reported that 12% of gun owners with small children stored a gun loaded and unlocked.

Safety Programs to Protect Young Children

In 1988 the NRA created the "Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program" for gun safety. Eddie Eagle is a school-based program that teaches gun safety to young children (pre-school through sixth grade). With the help of a cartoon character, Eddie the Eagle, kids are taught that when they find a gun they should not touch it, but instead leave the area and tell an adult. The Violence Policy Center views the Eddie the Eagle Program as a marketing tool for the NRA:

The Eddie Eagle program employs strategies similar to those utilized by America's tobacco industry—from youth "educational" programs that are in fact marketing tools to the use of appealing cartoon characters that aim to put a friendly face on a hazardous product. The hoped-for result is new customers for the industry and new members for the NRA.

A 2004 study on the efficacy of the Eddie Eagle program (B. J. Gatheridge et al., "Comparison of Two Programs to Teach Firearm Injury Prevention Skills to Six- and Seven-Year-Old Children," Pediatrics, vol. 114, September

FIGURE 6.3

2004) showed that the NRA program was effective in teaching young children to verbalize the safety skills message. However, children who received behavior skills training—programs that incorporate active learning approaches such as modeling, rehearsal, and feedback—were more likely to exhibit the desired safety skills around guns.