P3A294: Ending Family Fire: Saving Lives Through Safe Firearm Storage

Background: Gun violence is a public health crisis, claiming the lives of more than 40,000 Americans each year. Yet the deadliest shootings are the ones we rarely talk about: Over half of all gun deaths are suicides. These tragedies are called “family fire,” a shooting involving an improperly stored or misused gun in the home that results in death or injury. Unintentional shootings, suicide, and intentional shootings are all forms of family fire.
Since 2018, in partnership with the Ad Council, our End Family Fire (EFF) program takes a public health, non-partisan approach to reduce gun violence by promoting safe gun storage — and it’s saving lives. During our presentation, we will discuss comprehensive data sets on key gun-owning populations and their perception of safe gun storage, analyze past and present EFF campaigns, and most importantly, educate the audience about their role in reducing firearm injury and death by practicing and promoting safe gun storage.

Project Description: The public health crisis of gun violence has an outsized impact on young people, the veteran community, firearm owners, and each day more communities are becoming impacted.
Gun violence is the leading cause of death for youth in America, and each day 8 children and teens are unintentionally injured or killed due to an unlocked or unsupervised gun in the home. An estimated 4.6 million children live in homes where at least one gun is kept loaded and unlocked. One study found that over 70% of children living in homes with guns knew where they were kept in the house, and 1 in 5 parents who said their child never handled the household gun were contradicted by their child’s report.
Safe gun storage is an evidence-based approach to prevent and reduce family fire. A 2019 study found that if just 20% of households storing at least one gun unlocked changed their storage practices to locking up all their firearms, it could reduce firearm suicide and unintentional firearm fatalities among youth by up to 32%.

Discussion: The campaign emphasizes that firearm suicide is preventable and focuses the suicide prevention conversation on firearm access.
Every aspect of EFF is grounded in evidence-based research with the target audience of gun owners, as well as with expert input from partners working in the fields of suicide prevention and mental health. We had three major areas of inquiry — issue, audience, and media ecosystem — in the development of EFF.

Conclusion: At the conclusion of the presentation, participants will be able to define EFF and the evidence-based solutions to address safe gun storage in gun-owning populations. Attendees will leave the event knowing how safe firearm storage can reduce gun injury and death — and the data to support it.