Up to 43% of U.S. households store their guns loaded, according to a new study released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The research, which details how often guns are properly stored in different U.S. states, also determined half of U.S. households that keep their firearms loaded do not store them in locked containers, ABC reports.
Households from eight states were surveyed in 2021 and 2022, including Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oklahoma. While the percentage of households that securely stored guns varied significantly by state, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Nevada had the highest rates of households storing loaded guns.
Of those surveyed in Ohio who had both children and a loaded gun in the house, about a quarter reported that the weapon was kept unlocked, representing the smallest percentage among the seven states with available data for that metric, according to The Seattle Times.
Unintentional Firearms Deaths Among Kids
Firearms are the leading cause of death in the United States for children aged 0-19 years, with more than 4,700 pediatric gun-related deaths reported in 2021. According to a Dec. 2023 report from the CDC, more than half of unintentional firearm injury deaths among children and adolescents occurred at home, and the firearms were often stored both loaded and unlocked. When stored unlocked, the most common place the firearm was accessed was inside or on top of a nightstand.
Data recorded from 2003 to 2021 by the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) identified 1,262 unintentional firearm injury deaths among children aged 0–17 years. The largest percentage of these deaths were among children aged 11–15 years at 33%, followed by 29% among those aged 0–5 years, 24% among those aged 16–17 years, and 14% among those aged 6–10 years.
Dr. Eric Sigel, a pedestrian, adolescent medicine specialist, and co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Firearm Injury Prevention Special Interest Group, said one in three middle and high schoolers have access to a firearm. In 2021, an estimated 30 million children lived in homes with firearms, including 4.6 million in households that reported storing firearms loaded and unlocked, the CDC says.
How to Properly Store a Firearm
According to the Department of Justice, the safest way to store a firearm is to unload and lock it before placing it in a locked storage case. Ammunition should also be locked in a secure location away from the firearm.
A 2022 statistical modeling study from the AAP estimates if 20% of parents changed their current storage practices to storing firearms unloaded and with the ammunition locked away separately, “there would be an estimated decrease of up to 122 pediatric firearm-related fatalities and 201 injuries annually.”
