GILROY
– The Gilroy Police Department this week set out a box of free
gun locks in its lobby, joining a nationwide effort to promote safe
storage of firearms.
GILROY – The Gilroy Police Department this week set out a box of free gun locks in its lobby, joining a nationwide effort to promote safe storage of firearms.
Anyone can walk into the police station at 7370 Rosanna St. and take one or more gun safety kits from the box, no questions asked. The GPD was given 800 of these kits to give away, a gift to community gun owners paid for by the U.S. Department of Justice and the firearms industry.
“The goal is to prevent a child or any unauthorized person from accessing a firearm in your home,” the GPD said in a media release.
The locks were provided by Project ChildSafe, a program of the National Shooting Sports Foundation that is distributing millions of free gun locks nationwide to keep children and teen-agers from accessing household guns.
In the words of program spokesperson Dee Dee Dockins, “Project ChildSafe is an important step forward in helping ensure that all firearm owners fully understand their responsibilities with respect to the safe handling and storage of firearms.”
Forty percent of U.S. households with children have guns, a 1999 poll by Peter Hart Research Associates found. Of these, 48 percent did not regularly make sure that guns are equipped with child safety or other trigger locks. (“Americans’ Attitudes on Children’s Access to Guns: A National Poll for Common Sense about Kids and Guns,” July 1999)
Teen-agers, more than younger children, are in danger of accidental death or suicide involving household firearms, according to federal statistics. In 2001, teens aged 15 to 19 accounted for 110 of the 182 people under age 20 who died as a result of gun accidents. Of the 928 under-20 gun suicides, 838 were between 15 and 19. (Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Injury Mortality Report. 2002 and 2003 data is not yet available.)
Gun-related suicides and accidental deaths among children and teens dropped in the 10 years from 1992 to 2001, according to the CDC.
Each gun safety kit in the GPD lobby contains a cable lock meant to fit most handguns, rifles and shotguns, plus instructions on how to use it. Once the metal cable is threaded through the unloaded weapon, its ends are connected by a padlock with a key.
Some gun owners are ambivalent over the locks. As a man in the GPD lobby picked up two of them Tuesday, the first day they were set out, his companion commented that if he were to catch someone breaking into his home, he wouldn’t want to take the time to unlock his gun.
People have been taking the locks, however. The box was full Tuesday morning and was less than half full two days later.
