Gun Storage Laws EXPOSED as Failure

From the moment mandatory storage laws became a thing, anyone with half a brain knew they’d never work. Why? Because people who are inclined to lock up their guns already do, while the rest aren’t going to, just because of some law that isn’t particularly enforceable until the moment something worse happens.

And you don’t need mandatory storage laws for that, as we’ve seen in several states where irresponsible parents have been successfully prosecuted for the crimes of their kids due to unsecured guns.

But now we have some hard data showing that so-called safe storage laws aren’t making anyone safer.

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to analyze the prevalence of firearm safety training and secure gun storage practices among American gun owners. We used nationally-representative survey data to estimate the impact of previously untested predictors of secure firearm storage. Findings show that older gun owners, gun owners living in metropolitan statistical areas, and low-SES gun owners are less likely to use secure firearm storage methods. Gun owners who receive formal, informal, or both forms of safety training are more likely to store firearms securely than those who receive no training. Additionally, results indicate that state-level secure gun storage laws have little influence on gun owners’ use of mechanisms to securely store their firearms. Findings suggest that firearm safety training has a demonstrable impact on improving gun owners’ use of secure firearm storage mechanisms.

Interesting.

But how accurate are their results? After all, just because I like the result doesn’t mean I shouldn’t look at the methodology.

This particular one uses a survey model, which has limitations, but it’s the only viable option for something like this. The question then is whether they got a decent sample size.

The goal was to get data from 1,000 respondents. They apparently did a bit better than that, noting, “The final weighted sample consisted of 1,078 gun owners who provided complete survey responses.”

That doesn’t seem like a lot, and I’d argue it’s too small, but that also seems to be the standard for many of these studies, so I’ll try to be good this time around.

And this is identical to some studies anti-gunners have celebrated as if they were definitive. They liked those results, so they need to stick these in their craw and deal with the ramifications.

The truth is that people who are inclined to lock up guns already do. Threatening punishment doesn’t work because no one figures they’re going to get caught.

Education, on the other hand, addresses the inclination. It convinces people to become inclined to lock up their guns. That changes things, and it’s why states looking to address the problems associated with unsecured firearms would do better to address them via educational campaigns. This is something that should be as non-partisan as it gets, especially now that we have data supporting it.

But I suspect what we’ll find is the usual crowd pushing for mandatory, unsafe storage laws while ignoring the actual impact of those laws and that there’s something that works better.

That assumes they mean it when they say they want “gun safety.”