State Firearm Laws,Firearm Ownership,and Safety Practices Among Families of Preschool-Aged Children

Objectives. We investigated how state-level firearms legislation is associated with firearm ownership and storage among families with preschool-aged children.Methods. Using 2005 nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (n = 8100), we conducted multinomial regression models to examine the associations between state-level firearms legislation generally, child access prevention (CAP) firearms legislation specifically, and parental firearm ownership and storage safety practices.Results. Overall, 8% of families with children aged 4 years living in states with stronger firearm laws and CAP laws owned firearms compared with 24% of families in states with weaker firearm laws and no CAP laws. Storage behaviors of firearm owners differed minimally across legislative contexts. When we controlled for family- and state-level characteristics, we found that firearm legislation and CAP laws interacted to predict ownership and storage behaviors, with unsafe storage least likely among families in states with both CAP laws and stronger firearm legislation.Conclusions. Broader firearm legislation is linked with the efficacy of child-specific legislation in promoting responsible firearm ownership.Family firearm safety practices are a major public health concern, with firearm-related deaths being one of the leading causes of injury-related fatalities among young children.1 Recent media attention on accidental shootings involving young children has heightened public and policy debate over the role of government in restricting access to firearms and the effectiveness of firearm laws.2,3 Some states have implemented laws—often referred to generally as child access prevention (CAP) laws—that legislate safe firearm storage practices among families with children and make adults criminally liable for children’s unsupervised use of firearms. Studies examining the effects of CAP laws, however, report mixed findings, suggesting that they have a greater effect on child morbidity and mortality when instituted in states with higher levels of pediatric firearm incidents and when the penalties associated with firearm usage are more stringent.4–8 One explanation for the lack of consistent findings is that most studies have not directly measured the behavior CAP laws intend to regulate. That is, little is known about how these access laws are associated with factors beyond mortality and morbidity, such as firearm storage behaviors. We addressed this gap by empirically testing the relationship between CAP laws and firearm storage behaviors in a nationally representative sample.Currently, limitations of this literature constrain the ability to draw strong conclusions about the effects of state-level policies on firearm ownership and storage practices.4,9 For example, because person-level data on firearm-related behavior is scarce, many studies that rely on macrolevel statistics (e.g., state firearm ownership, firearm-related mortality) run the risk of creating ecological fallacies, whereby associations at the aggregate level are erroneously extrapolated to the individual level.10 Similarly, aggregate-level data do not allow the examination of the specific populations that the policies address and, hence, may not be sufficiently sensitive to directly test these policies’ effects. A lack of data that can be used to compare ownership and specific aspects of that ownership, such as safety practices, also makes it difficult to determine if stronger laws generally affect firearm ownership or laws directed at specific unsafe behaviors work. Furthermore, the potential for state policies to be a product of the selectivity of the residents of the state complicates disentangling the effects of state-level firearm laws.11 Lawmakers in states with a high proportion of firearm owners may be more reluctant to pass laws that regulate firearm practices; consequently, observed correlations between laws and state-level firearm ownership may reflect state population characteristics or state “gun culture” to a greater extent than states’ firearm policy (or lack thereof).In line with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation that parents who own firearms store them locked and unloaded, with ammunition locked and stored separately,12 we examined how laws aimed at firearm storage practices—along with general state-level firearm laws—are associated with firearm ownership and storage behaviors among families with preschool-aged children. Previous research has suggested a theoretical framework emphasizing the importance of both situational and individual characteristics in understanding patterns of firearm ownership.13 For example, studies link higher socioeconomic status, being White, and having a man in the house with higher levels of firearm ownership.14,15 We anticipated that (1) families in states with stronger general and child-specific firearm legislation would have the lowest rates of firearm ownership and the highest rates of safe firearm storage, (2) families in states with weaker firearm legislation would report the highest levels of ownership and the lowest levels of storage safety, and (3) families in states with a relatively strong set of laws in one domain but not in the other would fall between these 2 groups, with higher levels of ownership and safer storage practices in states with CAP laws but weaker general laws than in states with the opposite combination of laws.