Too many U.S. households contain a loaded gun that is not securely stored Children who could easily access the firearm are present in many of these homes More must be done to educate gun owners about the risks of unsecured guns at home FRIDAY, June 14, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- In half of American homes containing a loaded gun, that gun is kept unsecured and ready for potential use, often with children in the home, new research shows.
The finding is especially troubling given the link between gun accessibility and accidental child deaths, as well as rising rates of gun-related suicides in the United States, researchers said. "The presence of a firearm in the home has been associated with an increased risk for firearm homicide and suicide among household members," wrote a team of researchers led by . She's an investigator with the U.
S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Violence Prevention. In the research, Friar's team used federal survey data to track rates of gun ownership and storage practices in households in eight states: Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Oklahoma.
They found widely varying rates of guns being kept in the home -- from 18.4% of households surveyed in California to about 39% in Oklahoma and more than half (50.6%) of homes in Alaska.
In most of the eight states surveyed, more than a third of homes that contained a gun also had children living in the home. In Alaska, that number rose to more than .
