Another area of agreement is that guns should be kept locked up or disabled so they don’t get into the hands of those who weren’t meant to have them, including children.  1  2  This seems like common sense. It’s estimated a half million firearms are lost or stolen from private residences every year – often going on the black market to criminals. 3 There were 20,000 accidental deaths of kids who took relatives’ guns or relatives of friends’ guns from 2005 to 2014. 4 There were 6,000 minors who intentionally shot themselves with relatives’ guns or relatives of friends’ guns from 2004 to 2014.  5

These especially vulnerable people didn’t need to get shot or die. Common sense - locking up the guns so there was no access to them by kids or those thinking about suicide – could have prevented their deaths. “Safe Storage” or “Ethan Laws” (named after a 15-year-old in Connecticut who accidentally killed himself with his friend’s father’s gun) are under debate or being enacted at the state and national levels. The best of them include:

-Requiring child-proof safety locks on newly-manufactured guns.

- Making it mandatory that these safety locks be used to disable the gun when it isn’t being carried by the owner or under his immediate control, or that guns are locked up when not in use.

Americans strongly support laws requiring the safe storage of firearms.  
We urge Congress to act. It would prevent the deaths of thousands of vulnerable people.

Though there are strong and sometimes opposing views on how to interpret the Second Amendment – we Americans don’t have to bulldoze over each other as if those on a different side didn’t matter! We can talk with one another – and bring about with cooler minds sensible laws we agree on.