At gun safety events, 40% of gun owners reported not locking all household guns — even around kids

Authored by washington.edu and submitted by TX908
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At gun safety events, 40% of gun owners reported not locking all household guns — even around kids

While waiting for free firearm storage devices at gun safety events held in sporting goods stores across Washington, nearly 3,000 people filled out a one-page survey asking how they stored guns at home and other household information.

What the participants reported emphasizes the need for these public events, Seattle Children’s and University of Washington researchers say, because 40% of gun owners at the events reported having at least one firearm in their home that was not locked up. In addition, 39% of survey takers indicated they kept a loaded gun at home, and 14% stored all guns unlocked and loaded.

“Even in this population, which clearly had some interest in or awareness of firearm safety, there was a high prevalence of unlocked firearms,” said lead author Aisha King, who worked on the study while a graduate student at the UW’s School of Public Health and as an intern with Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center’s INSIGHTsummer research program.

Furthermore, results of surveys conducted at the events in 10 Washington cities between 2015 and 2018 determined that the presence of children in the home did not make a difference. The study is available online now and is part of the February 2020 edition of the journal Preventative Medicine.

The firearm safety events were put on by Seattle Children’s in partnership with UW Medicine’s Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center, public health agencies, local hospitals in each city, community organizations and Safe Kids coalitions.

In addition to taking a survey and receiving a free firearm lockbox or trigger lock, people at the public events received training on safe firearm storage and proper use of storage devices. The events were held in Monroe, Tacoma, Kirkland, Wenatchee, Seattle, Lacy, Mount Vernon, Moses Lake, Silverdale and Federal Way.

“The purpose of the events is to increase the use of safe firearm storage, an evidence-based strategy to reduce firearm related injuries and deaths,” said Elizabeth Bennett, co-author and director of community health and engagement at Seattle Children’s. “Our goal is to create a comfortable environment to learn about locking up firearms and to have the devices ready to use right away.”

Public gun safety events are an effective tool for improving the safety of kids living around firearms, a previous study found, and the events reach an key audience: male gun owners.

This is an important demographic to reach, King said, because men make up the majority of gun owners and typically take responsibility for how guns are stored in the home. When gun safety interventions are held in pediatrician offices or similar clinic settings, most parents or guardians who attend are female.

Importantly, nearly all of the roughly 3,000 who submitted surveys said they planned to use the free safety device within the following week. Storing firearms locked and unloaded, the researchers point out, is associated with a greater-than 70% reduction in risk of unintentional and self-inflicted firearm injuries among young people.

King, who is currently a project coordinator at Columbia University, added that when it comes to firearm storage some adults might think that younger children don’t know where the guns are or don’t know how to access them, but that is not always the case.

“A lot of times, the kids do know,” King said. “Also, guardians might think that training adolescents or older children is enough to keep them safe, that training means they don’t have to lock their guns. Unfortunately, a lot of adolescents are at high risk of suicide, and unlocked guns add to that risk – regardless of training.”

Co-authors include Alison C. Roxby, Department of Global Health, UW schools of Medicine and Public Health; Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, the Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Department of Epidemiology, UW School of Public Health; Joseph Simonetti, University of Colorado School of Medicine and Veterans Health Administration, Colorado; and Cassie Simeona and Lauren Staneck, Seattle Children’s.

Learn more about the UW’s Population Health Initiative: a 25-year, interdisciplinary effort to bring understanding and solutions to the biggest challenges facing communities.

whiskeynguns on January 10th, 2020 at 20:31 UTC »

This was posted earlier, along with some similar statements: " I don’t think it’s a matter of preventing them, but a matter of determining how many accidents you find acceptable in society. "

So, how many fatal gun accidents are there?

To put this into perspective, there are about 32,000 (thirty two THOUSAND) fatal car accidents a year in the US.

There are about 500 accidental gun deaths each year in the US. Even though MILLIONS of new guns enter circulation each year, the rate of accidental gun deaths has been dropping for decades, and is at or near record lows now.

How many accidental gun deaths to children to age 14?

About 50 a year. A while back I reviewed CDC data on unintentional external causes of death (accidents) to kids to age 14.

1.2% of those were gun-related.

While every accidental death is a tragedy, especially when it is a child, we do need to keep the magnitude of the problem in perspective.

ceestand on January 10th, 2020 at 19:46 UTC »

I don't believe this to be a good study. Or, at least not one demonstrating what the authors would like.

The people surveyed were at a "gun safety event" (no definition given) at various sporting goods stores (also no definition given). This group does not necessarily represent gun owners in general, and the group also likely skews highly towards people less likely to properly secure their firearms. Let me explain my reasoning:

The survey takes place at a "gun safety event." Seasoned firearm owners are unlikely to attend an event* like this.

Firearm safety is an extremely static subject. With the exception of something like RFID user identification locking, the tenets and technology around gun security are relatively unchanged for the past century. Locking up guns, in safes that share designs with those produced decades ago, is not a continuing education exercise.

After a gun owner has in their possession more than a gun or two, security, not just for the safety of domestic persons, but to protect from theft, exponentially becomes a bugaboo. Longtime gun owners want to keep their collection safe, and would have taken steps to do so outside of an event like this.

The gun locks, or safety devices, that are given out at these kind of events, are almost always of extremely poor quality. They can sometimes be picked by children, have a very limited variation in keys or combinations, and offer almost no resistance to basic hand tools. Use of them can, in some cases, even damage the firearms they are securing or those adjacent. In some areas these are, by law, provided with each firearm purchase. Most gun owners are quite aware of the devices' limitations.

* in reality, these are often not "events" in that they have a captive audience, but rather people handing out information and devices at a convenient location.

nearly all of the roughly 3,000 who submitted surveys said they planned to use the free safety device within the following week

If we are to believe the survey respondents, then it stands to reason that they are not and were not opposed to securing their firearms, but rather lacked the means or education to do so. Again, this group is self-selecting in that someone who believes that gun safety and security is important, would not participate in such an event's activities.

So, the study may very well be excluding a large contingent of gun owners, and if so it's exacerbated by said gun owners also owning a disproportionate number of guns. Throw on top of this many gun owner's reluctance to self-report anything and you don't have a good representative subject group.

Now, proper firearm safety and security in our society definitely need to be improved upon, and the numbers in this article could just as likely be under-reported as over-reported, but I don't believe they are indicative of any significant findings.

justifun on January 10th, 2020 at 17:52 UTC »

Then there's the lockpickinglawyer videos showing how crappy some of these gun safes are and how easy they are to open even for a child.