Catherine Mortensen

National Rifle Association

What are Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws?

Generally, Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws impose criminal and/or civil liability on parents, guardians or other adults when children access their firearms. These measures are sometimes referred to as mandatory storage laws where immunity is only granted when the gun was stored in a safe or equipped with a locking device, rendering the firearm temporarily unavailable for personal protection. Most such proposals lack adequate exemptions for lawful recreational activities or self-defense.

Why does the NRA oppose them?

The NRA opposes these laws because they are unnecessary, ineffective, and endanger law-abiding gun owners.

Unnecessary

New Mexico already has laws on the books to hold adults accountable for endangering a child. (NMSA Section 30-6-1, New Mexico’s Child Abuse/Abandonment statute). Under the law, it is a felony for a responsible person to knowingly, intentionally, or negligently, and without justifiable cause, cause or permit a child to be placed in a situation that may endanger the child’s life or health. Prosecutors have the tools, in appropriate cases, to hold parents, guardians or other custodians of children accountable when a child gains unauthorized access to a firearm and commits a crime or injures himself or someone else.

Ineffective

According to a study by John R. Lott, Jr., PhD, and John Whitley, "Safe Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime," - there is no evidence that CAP laws reduce either juvenile accidental firearm deaths or suicides. Instead, these laws appear to make it harder for law-abiding gun owners to protect themselves. Out of the ten states that had CAP laws for at least four years, relative violent crime stopped falling when these statutes were adopted and then ended up even higher at the end the four-year period. The only consistent impact was that these laws were significantly related to higher rates of rape, robbery, and burglary.

Endangering law-abiding gun owners and infringing upon Second Amendment rights

The study above found a higher rate of certain violent crimes in states in years after they had adopted CAP laws. It stands to reason that these laws could make it harder for law-abiding gun owners to protect themselves and their families against home invasion, burglaries and other threats in or on their property. Further, law-abiding adults run the risk of violating CAP laws and incurring civil or criminal liability for participating in legitimate recreational, training and competitive activities involving youth and firearms.

The United States Supreme Court struck down as invalid laws that require “firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times.” (District of Columbia v. Heller) The Court affirmed that “the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute” in the home and the Second Amendment “elevates above all other interests” the right “to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” (Heller) Clearly, a firearm meant for home defense must be accessible and operable.

Are children facing greater dangers from firearms today?

No. Even with record-high numbers of firearm sales, this is not the case. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, annually, over the last 5 years, the chance of a child dying in a firearms accident has been one in one million. The downward trend in firearm accident deaths among children since has occurred as the number of firearms owned by the American people has risen by more than 200 million. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unintentional firearm injury-related deaths among children under age 15 have dropped from 88 to 50 between 1999 and 2014.

Children are twenty-four times as likely to die of suffocation and more than twelve times as many children drowned in 2014 as were killed in unintentional firearm deaths.

What can be done to protect children from firearm accidents?

Gun safety education and accident prevention programs offered by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and the National Rifle Association have been major contributing factors to the aforementioned declines.

NSSF, the national firearms industry trade group, has distributed more than 100 million free safety kits that include educational materials and gun locks through partnering law enforcement departments in all 50 states. NRA developed the Eddie Eagle GunSafe program in 1988, which has been used by nearly 100 police departments and over 50 schools in the state to deliver its life-saving message to more than 270,000 New Mexico children. Kids are taught that if they encounter a firearm unsupervised, they should “STOP. Don’t Touch. Run Away. Tell A Grown-Up.

Catherine Mortensen / Media Liaison / National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action