We need gun safe storage laws

In his June 25 advisory, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called firearm violence a public health crisis, noting that it is now the leading cause of death among U.S. children.

For me, this is personal.

My son, Kenzo, was 15 when he was shot and killed by a friend whose home he was visiting. To impress Kenzo, the friend had quietly gone and gotten the semiautomatic handgun his father kept unlocked next to his bed “for protection.”

The boy thought he’d unloaded it when he removed the magazine. He brought it back into the room where Kenzo was and pulled the trigger, expecting only a click. The round still hidden in the chamber killed Kenzo. My son may well be alive today if his friend’s father had locked his gun away.

When my wife and I sued Beretta USA for distributing a gun that lacked crucial safety features, one of our expert witnesses, Stanford professor of psychiatry Dr. Hans Steiner, testified that adolescent boys are very attracted to objects of power, such as cars and guns. Their muscle mass is doubling; their testosterone levels are increasing three-fold; their additional competencies are like new toys they are testing. They rely on their peer group, and if it rejects them, there can be trouble. Many of them don’t yet have good judgment.

Leaving guns accessible to young people just perpetuates the public health crisis we now find ourselves in. Since 1999, the year of the Columbine High School shooting, 383,000 students have experienced gun violence at school in the United States.

The Giffords Law Center reports that “up to 90% of guns used by minors in suicides, unintentional shootings and school shootings are found in the child’s home or the home of a relative.” Every day, eight children and teens are unintentionally injured or killed because of misuse of an unsecured gun in the home, according to Brady United Against Gun Violence and its End Family Fire program.

But we can prevent many of these gun deaths and injuries with safe gun storage. That was the conclusion of a case control study led by Dr. David Grossman of the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle. Households where guns are locked up, unloaded and stored separately from ammunition which is kept locked have lower rates of unintentional and self-inflicted gun injuries among children and adolescents than gun owning households that do not follow these safeguards.

So far, it’s been up to states to pass child access prevention laws or safe storage laws. Currently 26 states have done so, according to Giffords. But more states need to take action.

I understand that some people don’t like laws requiring the safe storage of guns because such laws impinge on their freedom to do as they like in their own homes. I’m all for freedom, too, except when someone’s supposed “freedom” endangers the lives of others.

When our founding fathers wrote the Constitution, they were strongly influenced by philosophers like John Locke, who understood the need for a balance between freedom and the temptations of excessive passion and power. The compromise was a social contract in which some natural liberty is surrendered subject to mutual consent. The safety and security of the people is an emphasis of the Constitution right from its very first sentence.

Griffin Dix, Ph.D., is co-chair of the Oakland/Alameda County Brady Chapter. He is the author of “Who Killed Kenzo? The Loss of a Son and the Ongoing Battle for Gun Safety.”