Safe Firearm Storage and Child Access Prevention Policy Database

All students and members of our school communities deserve to feel safe, welcomed, and included. All of us must work together to prevent firearm violence and to avoid the harm and tragedy that shootings of any kind can cause in the spaces in which we live, learn, work, and play.

Safe firearm storage is one of many preventative actions that we can take in keeping school communities and school buildings and grounds safe. When firearms are stored safely, it can help prevent them from getting into the hands of children and teens, who may use them to, intentionally or unintentionally, harm themselves or others. Safe storage can go a long way in preventing lives from being lost or permanently altered.

Firearm-Related Injuries and Deaths: A Problem We Must Solve Together

Firearm-related injuries and deaths are a public health crisis that communities across the nation face every day:

• Since 2018, there have been more than 100 school shooting incidents per year in our country and those numbers have steadily increased.¹
• Approximately three-quarters of perpetrators in school-based active shooter situations acquired their firearm from the home of a parent or close relative.²
• However, this issue goes beyond school shooting incidents and includes a variety of firearm injury types, including interpersonal violence, suicide, and unintentional fatal and nonfatal firearm injuries.³
• More than 4 million children live in a household with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm.⁴ Studies have found that households with both locked firearms and locked ammunition have significantly lower risks of both self-inflicted firearm injuries and unintentional firearm injuries among children and teens compared to households that did not safely store firearms.⁵

Safe Firearm Storage: Actions to Take to Keep Our Communities Safe

Safe firearm storage is one of many preventative actions that we can take in keeping school communities and school buildings and grounds safe. When firearms are stored safely, it can help prevent them from getting into the hands of children and teens, who may use them to, intentionally or unintentionally, harm themselves or others. Safe storage can go a long way in preventing lives from being lost or permanently altered.

Everyone, both firearm owners and non-owners, has a role to play in building awareness of safe, responsible firearm storage. Below are simple, effective practices derived from the U.S. Department of Justice guide, Safe Storage of Firearms - Unload it, Lock it, Store it, that can help to reduce firearm-related incidents in our community and help protect our kids. In addition to these practices, it is important to engage children and adolescents in conversations about the dangers associated with using firearms and what to do and not do in the event they access a firearm, to prevent fatal or non-fatal injuries.

• Safely Store Firearms: Store firearms – always unloaded – in a tamper proof locked cabinet, box, safe, firearm vault, or storage case that children or other unauthorized adults cannot access.
• Safely Store Ammunition: Store ammunition in a separate, tamper-proof locked cabinet, safe, firearm vault, or storage case that children or other unauthorized adults cannot access.
• Secure Firearms: Use trigger locks or cable locks to prevent a firearm from firing. (More information can be found in the Safe Firearm Storage Fact Sheet, developed by the U.S. Department of Justice.)
  • Trigger locks use a mechanism that clamps down around the trigger or trigger housing to prevent it from being pressed (Note: trigger locks should not be installed on loaded firearms).
  • In a cable lock, a cable is threaded through the barrel or action of a firearm to prevent it from firing.⁶

To help make our communities safer, several states and territories across the United States have established laws to enforce safe firearm storage and child access prevention. This resource is designed to provide educators with a better understanding of the current safe firearm storage and child access prevention laws across the country. It provides information on these laws for each of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (referred to as states hereafter). This resource also provides examples of state and local actions that are being taken by school districts to promote safe firearm storage and prevent children and youth from gaining access to firearms.

The laws found in this database were identified through a policy scan⁷ of the LexisNexis database and were in effect as of May 2024.

Related Resources

In addition to this database, the U.S. Department of Education and the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention have recently released the following resource that can also support safe storage. The Safe Firearm Storage: Sample Letter to Families (Template) provides a communications template principals and district leaders can customize and share with families to encourage safe firearm storage.

The U.S. Department of Education and the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention also released four new resources for schools related to school safety.

 

• How State Leaders Can Help Respond to Incidents of School-Based Gun Violence and Support Recovery in School Communities (Brief)
   Shares considerations for organizing a state-level response to support schools and districts in recovery from school-based gun violence.
• Physical Safety Measures: Communication Systems (Brief) 
   Provides considerations for districts and schools on (a) what information is communicated, (b) when the communication should take place, (c) a process for ensuring that staff and students understand what is being communicated
• Physical Safety Measures: Outdoor and Entrance Safety Procedures (Brief)
   Describes school and district policies and practices that can ensure only school staff, students, family members, and other authorized visitors enter school grounds.
• Physical Safety Measures: Classroom Safety Procedures (Brief)
   Offers procedures schools can implement during an emergency lockdown to prevent a potential shooter from seeing and accessing individuals within a classroom.

¹ Riedman, D. (2023). K-12 School Shooting Database. https://k12ssdb.org/

² National Threat Assessment Center. (2019). Protecting America’s Schools: U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence. U.S. Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security. https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/Protecting_Americas_Schools.pdf

³ National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Violence Prevention. (September 19, 2023). Fast Facts: Firearm Violence and Injury Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/firearm-violence/data-research/facts-stats/index.html

⁴ Miller, M., & Azrael, D. (2022). Firearm Storage in U.S. Households With Children: Findings From the 2021 National Firearm Survey, JAMA Network Open, 5(2): e2148823.

⁵ Grossman, D.C., Mueller, B.A., Riedy, C., Dowd, M.D., Villaveces, A., Prodzinski, J., Howard, J., Thiersch, N,. & Harruff, R. (2005). Gun Storage Practices and Risk of Youth Suicide and Unintentional Firearm Injuries. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/200330

⁶Safe Storage of Firearms – Unload it, Lock it, Store it. U.S. Department of Justice; 2024. Pages 2-5.

⁷ NCSSLE identified safe firearm storage and child access prevention laws by conducting related keyword searches within the LexisNexis database. To help ensure the accuracy of the information collected, NCSSLE included a legal project specialist who has expertise in conducting policy scans in search and quality assurance. NCSSLE also asked state education agency (SEA) representatives to review information regarding education-specific laws for their state or jurisdiction and provide corrections and/or additions, as appropriate. NCSSLE has not independently verified the accuracy of the information provided by SEA representatives.

Product Disclaimer: This web-based resource was developed under a contract from the U.S. Department of Education through the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), by the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments under Award # 91990021A0020. This resource contains information that is provided for the user’s convenience. The inclusion of this information is not intended to reflect its importance, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, or products or services offered. This resource may contain the views and recommendations of various subject matter experts as well as hypertext links, contact addresses, and websites to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. The opinions expressed in this resource do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Education. The U.S. Department of Education does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any outside information included in this resource.