Unloaded firearms can also be secured with a gun locking device that renders the firearm inoperable. Be sure to place a locked storage case in a location inaccessible to children. Unloaded firearms should be stored in a locked cabinet, safe, gun vault or storage case. Project ChildSafe states in its brochure: Concealed Carry Association (Alcazar, 2021) recommend that firearms be stored locked and unloaded, and stored separate from ammunition, which they recommend should also be stored locked. What Constitutes Safe Storage?Įverytown for Gun Safety Action Fund (undated), the American Academy of Pediatrics (Schaechter, 2021), the National Shooting Sports Foundation (as part of its Project ChildSafe program) (NSSF, 2016), and the U.S. The information for this essay was collected from a targeted search of the literature that relied on searching PubMed for citations after 2010, existing meta-analyses or literature reviews that describe interventions to promote safe storage, and reviews or analyses that describe the effectiveness of these efforts, and was complemented with reference list searches of identified, relevant studies. These interventions are categorized as clinical interventions, community-based interventions, and public policies. After describing how Americans typically store their firearms and the rationale for storage practices, the essay reviews research on the effectiveness of interventions that seek to change firearm storage practices. This includes populations of interest because of current events and risk for harm, including those individuals who purchased a firearm during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, households with children in them, persons with mental health conditions or at risk for suicide, and military/veteran populations. This is supplemented by research on select populations with data from 2010 or later.
gun owners' storage practices from nationally and state-representative surveys. This essay discusses what is meant by safe firearm storage and provides estimates of U.S. For these reasons, public health campaigns and policies have been created and implemented to promote the safe storage of personally owned firearms. In the case of firearms, reducing access to lethal means entails storing firearms locked and unloaded (Azrael and Miller, 2016). Findings from many studies are consistent with those theories, and they are supported by broad consensus among public health organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the U.S. In addition, there is a compelling theoretical argument for preventing suicide by reducing access to lethal means.
Such storage practices may help prevent unintentional firearm deaths and injuries among children (Parikh et al., 2017).
Public health and gun rights advocates agree that gun owners should store their firearms in a manner that prevents unauthorized individuals from accessing them. Given the importance of preventing unauthorized individuals' access to firearms and the importance of current gun owners' storage practices, new approaches are needed and evaluations must be conducted to improve firearm storage practices in the United States. Although there is evidence that child-access prevention laws that impose penalties on adults who enable children to have unsupervised access to firearms might reduce suicide, unintentional injuries, and violent crime, these laws' influence on gun owners' storage practices specifically might depend on the other firearm-related policies within individual states. There is some evidence that clinical interventions, such as lethal means counseling, communication campaigns, or trainings, are effective at changing gun owners' storage practices, but distributing storage devices might be most effective. The greatest influence of storage practices among those who do not store their firearms as recommended are their perceptions of risk and protection. To date, most empirical evidence indicates that approximately half of American gun owners store their firearms locked, and one-third store all of their firearms locked and unloaded. Summary: Multiple stakeholder groups recommend that firearms be stored locked and unloaded and that ammunition be stored separately.
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