Stop the Gun Play : Nearly 90% of the accidental shootings of children 14 and under happen in the home. A variety of devices in all price ranges are available to help keep guns out of kids’ hands.
Brian Harris thinks of himself as a good family man. He and his wife have three children, ranging in age from 3 to 10. A vice president with Turner’s Outdoorsman, a Southland sporting goods chain, Harris also keeps a pistol in his home, partly because he enjoys target shooting, but also for protection.
Harris (no relation to the writer) stresses to his children that a gun is not a toy and he begins teaching them basic gun safety about age 5. He also keeps his handgun secure and uses a rubber strap device now available on the market to add extra safety.
Lee Montoya, who works with Harris, also is a family man, with an 11-month-old daughter who’s just beginning to walk and explore her surroundings. And Montoya, like Harris, also keeps a pistol at home for protection. He keeps his gun secured, but he made that decision long before his baby was born.
He and his wife have friends with young children who visit, and he understands that kids will be kids and that accidents can happen quickly. For that reason, he’s always kept his handgun in a safe.
As gun owners, Harris and Montoya have plenty of company in Southern California, where 29% of the homes (866,970 households) have at least one gun in them, according to an April, 1992, poll by The Times.
The same poll, conducted before the May riots, found that 20% of Los Angeles County adults surveyed were likely to buy a gun within the year, with 75% saying the gun would be for personal use.
Since the riots, Los Angeles County’s largest firearm retailers say their business has skyrocketed.
But only 60% of gun owners safeguard their weapons at home, according to the poll, and that worries citizen groups and public officials and has led to state legislation on gun safety.
The irony of the gun in the home is that sometimes, rather than protecting, it ends up injuring family members--sometimes fatally. Nearly 90% of the accidental shootings of children ages 14 and under happen in the home, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center to Prevent Handgun Violence.
Gene Erbin, legal counsel of the state Assembly Judiciary Committee, said that based on the data he’s seen he estimates about 200 children are shot each year in California, 50 fatally.
In Orange County alone, more than 30 adults and children died between 1987 and 1992 due to accidental shootings.
Some gun owners will protect their families against other household hazards, one gun-control advocate said, while ignoring the dangers of a firearm.
“We lock up our poisons, we child-proof our home, we put locks on the cabinets and we have safety caps on our medications,” said Heather Morse, western program coordinator for Handgun Control Inc., a national gun control lobbying group. “But we’ll leave a loaded firearm in our night-stand drawer, thinking that a child won’t get to it. But a child will. A $5 trigger lock can save a life.”
State and local officials are concerned about the number of guns in California homes, but they are even more concerned about the ability of their
owners to be responsible for their safekeeping. Some are worried that many residents, without any previous experience in firearm use, safety or maintenance, will bring home a gun, load it and simply stick it in a drawer or closet, where a child can have easy access.
Those fears may be well founded. According to The Times’ poll, four in 10 gun owners do not keep their weapons locked up, and one in six has never even test-fired a gun, or last fired one more than 10 years ago.
John Lynch, head deputy district attorney for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, talked bluntly about the gun-safety issue:
“People have got to realize that (a gun) is deadly and they are attractive to kids,” he said. “If they (would look) at just the photographs of the ones that we look at, of a beautiful little 2-year-old kid with the back of the head blown off. . . .”
Over a year ago, the Legislature enacted a law directly aimed at those concerns. Known as the Children’s Firearm Accident Protection Act of 1991, it sets parameters for criminal liability if a child is injured or killed by a gun kept in the home, or if the child kills or injures someone else.
The law became effective January, 1992, and while many gun stores have posted signs about the new law, some officials are concerned that the public is not well-aware of the law’s impact.
“The law covers any loaded firearm,” Erbin said, including handguns, rifles and shotguns, adding that there is a stubborn percentage of shooting accidents in the home with rifles and shotguns.
The law’s intent is simple. Where a child is present, a loaded gun in the home must be secured in such a way that either the child can’t get to it, is unable to fire it or the gun is under direct adult supervision.
While it’s hard to be specific as to results, officials said the law has had a positive impact.
“We think the law has been pretty effective,” said Erbin, who served as counsel to now-retired Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly, the law’s sponsor. “We get lots of phone calls from people, lots of calls from police chiefs and sheriffs. And gun dealers saying they’re selling more trigger locking devices.”
Lynch agrees, although he said the evidence is hard to measure. “I do think the law has had a positive effect on the public,” he said.
Manufacturers have responded to a growing trend of gun owners wanting some sort of device to secure a gun from a child or accidental discharge.
“There are a lot more products on the market now than there used to be,” said Harris, the sporting goods executive. In fact, the variety of products available is more than his stores can handle. “If we stocked them all, it would fill half a room,” he said.
Randy Garell, a spokesman for the Grant Boys, a sporting goods store in Costa Mesa, said his store has seen increased public awareness of, and interest in, the law. “We spend a lot of time telling customers about it. No doubt the law has had an impact,” he said. Sales of gun-securing devices have increased and many new-gun purchases also include some type of lock, Garell said.
How do you comply with the new law and keep a gun in your home safely?
While it has several facets to it, the law says a loaded gun must be kept in a location “in which a reasonable person would believe it to be secure,” said Robert M. Jacobs, a partner with the Orange County law firm of Jacobs & Jacobs.
That could mean out of a child’s reach, such as perhaps on the top shelf in a closet, or on top of a tall piece of furniture, such as an armoire. But simply having a gun out of a child’s reach may not be the best way to completely secure it, he added.
Jacobs, a trial attorney for more than 20 years and with experience in firearms law, said it may open the door to issues of negligence, should a child get to the gun and harm someone.
Rather, Jacobs believes from the standpoint of compliance and possible liability, there are two better choices for the gun owner, and they are clearly spelled out in the law. “You either keep the gun locked in a container or have a locking device on it or in it.”
See story on K4.
