States in Lead on Gun Control

Massachusetts and Maryland have now joined with California in a noble effort to avert more gun tragedies. Both states will soon require that all handguns be sold with trigger locks. California led the way last January with the first statewide trigger lock law. Maryland and Massachusetts are also imposing, much as California has already done, a number of other requirements on gun makers and gun owners. Collectively, the restrictions include tamper-resistant serial numbers, safety warnings, bullet indicators and a ban on cheap handguns.

These welcome steps come on the heels of troubling new research findings that in nearly half of all homes with children and guns, the firearms are kept in unlocked places and without trigger locks. Nine percent of gun owners queried in this Rand-UCLA study say they keep their guns loaded as well as unlocked. Parents in these homes are setting the stage for tragedies involving curious toddlers or angry adolescents.

This week’s actions in Maryland and Massachusetts should prompt other states to follow suit. An initiative circulating for the November ballot would allow Colorado voters to extend state background check requirements to handguns sold at gun shows. Several other states have passed legislation that would allow them to regulate handguns as they would any other consumer product, the basis for the decision by Massachusetts’ attorney general to require the new safety measures. States with these consumer safety laws would do well to follow Massachusetts and include guns within their ambit. In Maryland, the new handgun measures were passed as legislation.

It’s no accident that the push for safer guns is happening at the state level. Polls consistently find that Americans want tougher controls on gun manufacture and sale. Yet Congress has not passed any meaningful gun laws since the Brady law in 1993. With the National Rifle Assn. now vaulting onto a list of the most lavish donors of unregulated “soft money” to the GOP, congressional Republicans will no doubt have an even harder time hearing the voice of the people over the din of coins dropping into their coffers.