A Nationwide Analysis of Child Access Prevention Laws

The 2021 National Firearm Survey found that as many as one in ten American children live in a home with an accessible and loaded firearm.

New research led by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and funded by the Bloomberg American Health Initiative shows that state-level child access prevention firearm storage policies are associated with reductions in youth gun suicide rates.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in November 2024 found that child access prevention laws effectively reduce firearm suicide deaths, as well as unintentional firearm injuries and homicides among youth ages 1-17. They also found that the most effective policies were those that require parents or guardians of children aged 16 and younger to store firearms unloaded and locked in a secure device. These laws were linked to a reduction in suicide rates by up to 14%.

Currently, 27 states and Washington D.C. have child access prevention laws in place. These laws fall into two main categories: (1) negligent storage policies that regulate how firearms must be stored in households with children, and (2) laws addressing the reckless provision of firearms to minors.

Because these laws vary by state, researchers developed a growth curve model that treats each state’s data as a control group. This model allowed them to identify the independent effect of the policy changes on outcomes, controlling for state-level factors that influence both firearm policy and suicide rates.

For this study, the researchers used nationally representative mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System, covering youth ages 1-17 from 1990 to 2020. The analysis focused on mortality rates for firearm suicides, non-firearm suicides, unintentional firearm deaths, and firearm homicides, based on International Classification of Disease codes.

The researchers found that firearm storage laws that only apply when a child has accessed or used a firearm did not appear to reduce youth firearm suicide rates. Additionally, they found that laws were more effective when applied to homes with children under 16, rather than those with a lower cut-off age.