Gun violence has been the leading cause of death for young children and teenagers in the United States since 2020. Many experts recommend treating gun-related violence among children as a public health and safety issue to prevent future tragedies.
Mandated gun storage in homes where children under 18 live has been a common ground for both Democrats and Republicans in seeking a solution to the problem.
"The majority of children who die (from gun violence) unintentionally are because there is an unsecured gun in the home," advocate Kristin Song said at a webinar Thursday sponsored by the Washington Post regarding the impact of gun violence on America's children and communities.
"Unsecured guns are the common denominator in most of these school shootings. If these guns were locked up, then the child shooters would not have access in the first place."
Ethan's Law was enacted in Connecticut in 2019 after advocacy by Kristin and Mike Song, the parents of Ethan Song, who was fatally shot at the age of 15 when a friend accessed his father's fully loaded gun, which had been stored in a shoebox at the friend's house.
The law requires safe gun storage in homes with minors under 18 to prevent similar incidents.
Sonali Rajan, health promotion and education professor at Columbia University, recommends approaching gun-related violence and death as a public health and safety issue.
"We want to think about prevention of a school shooting not in the moment of a violent act, which is where most of our funding and strategies are focused right now," Rajan said. "We want to think about what's happening months and years before. Often a student, a child, chooses to bring a firearm to the school with the intent to harm themselves or someone else."
Since Colorado's Columbine High School shooting in 1999, some 400,000 U.S. children have been exposed to school shootings, the Post has estimated.
John Woodrow Cox, Washington Post enterprise reporter, said half of the school shootings since Columbine would not have occurred if laws on safe gun storage had been mandated.
Critics of passing Ethan's Law at the federal level argue that locking up firearms could hinder quick access in emergencies, such as a robbery or home break-in.
Advocates respond to this argument by urging the use of biometric safes. Biometric safes can open in seconds and are effective in an emergency, similar to unlocking a mobile phone by fingerprint or facial recognition.
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