Unsafe Storage of Guns by Teenagers' Parents

A new research led by scientists at Harvard School of Public Health, Boston shows that parents of teens are rather careless when it comes to storing guns in their homes, by letting weapons unlocked, in easy to reach places and even at sight of their offsprings. On the contrary, parents who have younger children are more careful with how they store their guns around the house.

The findings of the study are rather concerning, because about one third of US living places and homes where kids live are known to store defense weapons. Moreover, statistics show that a lot of gun fire injuries among children take place in their homes. Also it is interesting why parents with teenage offsprings leave the guns within easy reach when many gun incidents and accidents are known to involve teenagers.

Lead researcher of the study, Renee M. Johnson explained: "It seems that parents are more concerned about gun safety when they have really young kids and aren't that concerned when they have older kids. We found that parents of older kids had less safe firearms practices and had their firearms stored in a manner that is easy to get to. For example, parents of adolescents were more likely to have their firearms stored unlocked and loaded than if there were younger kids in the house." Lead author of the study also noted: "Adolescents are more likely to die from firearm injury and suicide. And a lot of kids are getting guns from the home."

For the report, the team investigated around 400 parents who had fire guns in their homes, of whom 22% had a loaded locked gun, 31.5% an unloaded, yet unlocked gun and 8.3% of the parents kept unlocked leaded guns in their houses.

In 28% of the cases, children were aged between 13 and 17 and these were the cases in which the researchers also registered the highest incidence of unsafe gun storage - in 42% of these houses an unlocked gun was found.

The researching team concluded: "As young people become adolescents, parents may become less vigilant about keeping firearms stored securely. This assertion is supported by the present research, as well as by studies on parents' attitudes about firearm safety, in which authors concluded that parents were more likely to believe that adolescents, compared with younger children, are old enough to exhibit good judgment around firearms. This belief creates a situation in which adolescents have easy access to a lethal means with which to kill themselves or to hurt others."