Last year, at least 265 kids in the U.S. found a gun, pulled the trigger and accidentally shot themselves or someone else. It wasn’t always fatal, but it’s something that very easily could have been avoided.
"Once you have it inspected, make sure it's locked back. Then you're going to place the gun on a table or something that is secure so you can handle your lock with two hands, so you're not fumbling with your gun and the lock at the same time," says Kalispell chief of police Roger Nassett during a gun lock demonstration on Wednesday.
"The vast majority of firearms owners do responsibly store their firearms, but occasionally someone doesn't, and tragedy can happen."
That’s Bill Brassard, communications director for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. On Wednesday the Foundation hosted a firearms safety event with local law enforcement groups and the Professional Outdoor Media Association. The event marked the beginning of a new partnership between the Kalispell Police Department, Flathead County Sheriff’s Office and Project ChildSafe. The Shooting Sports Foundation started Project ChildSafe in the late 1990's to promote gun safety by distributing gun locks and educating owners about proper firearm storage. So far, 33 agencies in Montana have partnered with Project ChildSafe.
"I think Montana has a gun owning culture, especially because it’s a big hunting state, and I think people are more familiar with firearms and are using them more regularly, are more familiar with gun safety and take the right steps to responsibly store their firearms," says Nassett.
Nassett is the chief of police at the Kalispell Police Department. Despite that gun culture, Nassett says that in the Flathead Valley, his officers are just as likely to respond to adults who have accidentally shot themselves.
"We've had a couple deaths that we've investigated of people getting ready to clean their firearms, and they ended up shooting themselves on accident, and the majority of the time, those are fatal injuries."
Oulette: "Is that something a gun lock could prevent though?"
Nassett: "You know, it is ... If you have a gun lock on a gun, there's no way it can be loaded. That's the key."
Most new guns come with locks. The lock is a piece of flexible metal cable that loops through the gun’s action and attaches to a tiny padlock. Nassett and one of his officers demonstrated how to use the lock Wednesday.
Project ChildSafe has handed out 37 million firearm safety kits, which include gun locks, to 15,000 law enforcement departments across the country, and they report a 27 percent decline in fatal firearms accidents from 2003 to 2013. But if someone really wants to use the gun, they’ll find a way, Nassett says.
"Maybe mental illness or somebody's on drugs or some of those issues, I think it takes more than a lock at that point. There needs to be some other intervention."
Gun accidents are a problem anywhere there are guns, but in Montana, the number of times firearms are used for suicide is really high. Of the 40 youth suicides that happened in 2013, 75 percent were done with a firearm, according to the state health department. For adults, guns are involved in more than 90 percent. And while the health department’s suicide prevention plan recommends safe storage of guns at home and gun locks, neither are currently mandated. Montana has some of the most hands-off gun regulations in the country, and it seems people want it that way.
"I think to mandate something like that would be kind of a sticky wicket and I don't know that people would actually support it, even though it seems to be very obvious for safety," says Nassett.
In the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando last Sunday, Senator Jon Tester is calling for stricter legislation that would keep guns out the hands of potential terrorists, while Senator Steve Daines and Representative Ryan Zinke say the focus should be on radical Islam and ISIS, not gun control.
At the gun safety event in Kalispell, the focus was less on gun regulation and more on what people can do in their own homes to make their communities a little safer. Aimee Brunckhorst is the city clerk in Kalispell.
"For me personally, I've always felt that owning a gun comes with a huge responsibility, and a little frustration that maybe some people don’t take it as seriously as they should."
She says the Orlando shooting is a reminder of that responsibility.
"We all need to do what we can to make sure that our guns are not involved in anything tragic."
Gun locks and safety kits are available for free at the Kalispell Police Department and Flathead County Sheriff’s Office.
