Parents who teach their kids gun safety are also more likely to leave loaded guns out: Study

Firearm injuries are the leading cause of death in kids and teens in the U.S., making gun safety a priority for many families. But new research has found that parents who teach their children proper firearm handling are also more likely to engage in dangerous gun safety practices in their own homes.

The research letter, which was published in JAMA Pediatrics, surveyed nearly 7,800 people, including 870 parents, across nine states with a range of gun ownership rates, firearm policies and gun violence rates. The survey included people who said they had at least one gun in or around their home and at least one child living at home.

Of the gun-owning parents, 47% said they taught their children proper firearm handling, nearly 37% had their children practice firearm handling under their supervision and over 37% taught their children how to shoot guns. But the researchers discovered that each of these actions by the parents was strongly linked with storing at least one gun unlocked and loaded at home.

Pediatricians and gun safety experts say the findings aren’t shocking — but they also indicate that a significant portion of gun-owning parents are putting their children and others in danger. Here’s what they want people to know.

Why are parents doing this?

At baseline, parents seem to be leaving at least one loaded gun out for protection, lead study author Jennifer Paruk, a postdoctoral researcher at the Rutgers University School of Public Health Gun Violence Research Center, tells Yahoo Life. “Adults may store firearms unlocked and loaded so that they are ready to protect their home,” she says.

Paruk adds that these parents may also believe that by teaching kids responsible firearm use, they don’t need to be as stringent with storing their guns properly.

But these parents have a “false sense of security,” Elizabeth Choma, a pediatric nurse practitioner and assistant professor at the George Washington University School of Nursing, tells Yahoo Life. Choma says there’s a lot of expectation that kids will make the right decision if they happen to come across a loaded gun — and “that’s not rational.”

Research does suggest that educating adults on safe gun storage has a positive effect. A 2020 study of members of the Mississippi National Guard who owned firearms, for example, found that 55% of those who were given advice on safe gun storage still followed those safety recommendations three months later. But that’s adults — not children.

“This is using adult rationale on kids,” Choma says. “But kids are not little adults. They are curious, and they don’t have an understanding of what can happen when a gun is used.” She points out that parents are often taught that it’s important to take something away from a child if you don’t want them to have it — and the same principle should apply to guns.

“This study shows us that most gun owners want to operate firearms responsibly, but that we have more work to do to make sure this translates into the practices research tells us will keep their children safest," Sarah Burd-Sharps, senior director of research at Everytown for Gun Safety, tells Yahoo Life.

What is the danger in this?

The big danger is access, Dr. Brendan Campbell, pediatric surgeon at Connecticut Children’s and chair of the American College of Surgeons Injury Prevention and Control Committee, tells Yahoo Life. “Many Americans who own firearms for personal protection believe that having a loaded, accessible firearm in the home makes them safer. Decades of epidemiologic research on firearm injury risk has demonstrated that the opposite is true,” he says. “When loaded, accessible firearms are present in a home, they are more likely to cause harm to a family member by suicide, homicide or unintentional shooting than they are to be used against an intruder during a home invasion.”

Kids are also just not mature enough to handle being around firearms, Choma says. “You really have to consider growth and development across the ages,” she says. “Kids as young as 3 have the strength to pull the trigger, and they don’t have any understanding of the implications, even if you teach them how to safely use a firearm.” This, she says, “is a pretty slippery slope.”

Leaving a loaded firearm around the house also raises the risk that a child’s friend or young visitor may find it, or that your own child may want to show it off to someone. “There’s nothing to say that they wouldn’t pick up a gun and shoot someone with it,” Choma says.

Child suicide is also a concern, Paruk says. “In child firearm suicide deaths, 79% of the time the firearm belonged to the parent or extended family member, and the suicide often took place inside the home,” she says.

Burd-Sharps says that “there’s no question” that teaching kids firearm safety is important. “But the news every day tells us this is not enough to prevent children from getting their hands on a gun and unintentionally shooting themselves or someone else, nor does it prevent a teenager from gaining access to a gun and bringing it to school, or using it to end their own life in a moment of crisis,” she adds.

How to safely store guns

“The safest homes are the ones without guns, but we want to teach people to store guns safely,” Choma says. Data shows that more than half of all American gun owners, including 55% of gun owners with children in the home, don’t practice safe firearm storage.

Firearms should be stored unloaded and locked, with ammunition stored and locked away from the gun, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Some states have laws that require gun owners to lock up their firearms when they’re not in use, while others put criminal liability on adults if a child gets access to an unsecured firearm or if the gun is stored in a way in which a child is likely to get access, per Johns Hopkins.

Experts stress that safe storage can make a huge difference. “If you keep firearms in your home, like I do, it increases your family’s risk of injury or death significantly,” Campbell says. “However, there is one measure that you can take as a parent that dramatically lowers firearm injury risk: Keep all of your guns stored securely.”

Paruk says it’s important even for people without kids to store their guns properly. “Maybe you don’t have young children yourself, but you have nieces and nephews that come around. Secure firearm storage can keep everyone in the home safer from suicide or unintentional firearm injury,” she says.