Effective Firearm Injury Prevention: Asking About Firearms in Homes Children Visit

Does increasing public awareness about firearm safety contribute to caregivers feeling comfortable asking about their child’s access to firearms?

Over the last six years, Maya Haasz, MD, has led research on access to firearms with the goal of decreasing unintentional and intentional firearm injuries and deaths in children and adolescents. Dr. Haasz has noted a distressing trend in Colorado and across the county: Not only are many children and teens at risk of being unintentionally injured by a firearm in their home, but studies led by Dr. Haasz and others also report that 19% to 44% of unintentional firearms injuries and fatalities occur at the house of a child’s friend or other residence.

With Children’s Hospital Colorado’s support, Colorado passed a safe storage bill in 2021, which requires firearms to be safely stored when minors are present in the home. Despite the bill’s passage, Dr. Haasz was still noticing a concerning trend of easy access to firearms in the homes of children and their peers. In 2023, it was reported that 4.6 million households with youth contain loaded and unlocked firearms. This coincided with a Children’s Colorado study published in 2024 that found unintentional firearm injuries and deaths are still common and increasing in U.S. and Colorado children from 0 to 19 years of age.

“Even if families secure their own firearms, they don’t know what their child’s access is when they go to the home of a friend, grandparent or babysitting job,” explains Dr. Haasz. “This led to me surveying more than 1,500 families on where they receive their firearm safety information and how that impacts communicating about firearm storage and safety. I realized that pediatricians’ counseling around safe storage plays a unique, important role in gun violence protection. I also found that everyone has a role in promoting firearm safety — friends, caregivers and social media all had an impact on promoting firearm safety conversations.”

Talking about firearm safety

Dr. Haasz’s newly published study in the journal Pediatrics found that hearing about firearm safety information from a healthcare provider increased the likelihood of caregivers asking about firearms in other peoples’ homes. Dr. Haasz reports, “I found that less than 9% of parents report discussing firearm safety with their medical providers. This needs to change. I encourage every primary care provider to have ongoing conversations about firearm safety with families in their clinics, knowing education greatly impacts child health.”

The study identified that every new source of information about firearm safety (e.g., social media, peers, daycare or school, firearm safety class) increased caregivers’ likelihood of asking about firearm storage in other peoples’ homes by 40%. In other words, 16% of caregivers who had never heard firearm safety information asked about firearms in the places where their child was visiting. This rose to 79% of caregivers asking after they heard about firearm safety from eight different sources.

“Conversations about gun safety among caregivers and in communities need to be the norm, rather than the exception,” Dr. Haasz says. “My research indicates that more education, public awareness and destigmatization around discussing gun and firearm access will produce safer environments for kids to be in. Children as young as two years old can accidentally pull a trigger. If we create a culture where we are more comfortable talking about our children’s access to firearms in homes, we can contribute to ending this epidemic of preventable child deaths.”

Previous research has found that non-fatal firearm injuries tend to peak in the summer months, probably occurring when children are home alone, unsupervised and more likely to experiment with firearms that are not safely stored. This underscores the importance of parents and caregivers asking about the status and storage of firearms when children are visiting and playing at the homes of their extended families, peers and friends over the summer.

Tips for asking about storage of firearms

Children’s Colorado has supported the Colorado chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE)’s campaign  Secure Their Future. This project aims to educate pediatric practices across the state on the importance of discussing safe firearm storage with families. It encourages parents to ask:

• Are your guns secured?
• Are your guns unloaded and locked away?
• Am I uncomfortable with the environment in which my child will be playing? If so, can I offer to host at our house instead?
• Have I talked with my child about gun safety whenever they visit another home?

Under Dr. Haasz’s leadership, research now shows that more education and conversation around firearm storage can prompt caregivers to ask about the safety of the environments their children live and play in. “Guns should not be the leading cause of death in children in the U.S.,” Dr. Haasz declares. “If asking one simple question around the access to firearms in a home can save a life, then let’s encourage all parents to do that."