The bill, HB132, failed after a 4-4 vote Friday morning during a House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee meeting. Per House rules, if a bill receives a tie vote during a committee meeting, it fails.
Sponsored by Rep. Andrew Stoddard, D-Millcreek, the bill would have imposed a class C misdemeanor called “failure to secure a firearm resulting in a minor gaining access.” Anyone 18 or older who fails to secure their loaded firearm — which includes using a gun safe, trigger lock or other method — could be penalized if a minor accesses the gun and uses it in an “unlawful” way.
It’s aimed at penalizing instances where children find their parent or guardian’s unsecured firearm, and use it to commit a crime. It wouldn’t punish parents for unintentional shootings, where their children find a gun and accidentally shoot themselves, or suicides.
For the last three years, Stoddard has tried to pass some kind of safe storage bill. And each year, the bill has had fewer teeth. In 2023, it would have imposed criminal penalties on anyone who failed to safely store a firearm; in 2024, it would have imposed criminal penalties for people who fail to secure their firearm if it’s accessed by someone who isn’t supposed to have a gun, like a child or restricted person.
“There’s not really any lower we can go to at this point,” Stoddard said earlier this week. The penalty “is the same as speeding in a school zone. If I have a loud party at my house, it’s a class C misdemeanor.”
There are 26 states that have some kind of law around securing firearms. Stoddard says his bill is similar to a Florida law that holds adults criminally liable if a child gains access to their firearm and wields it “in a public place” or “in a rude, careless, angry or threatening manner.”
“This isn’t something novel. This isn’t making Utah a trailblazer. There are other states that have taken up this issue, it’s not just blue states,” said Stoddard during the committee meeting on Friday.
Although the bill ultimately failed, he told Utah News Dispatch that a 4-4 vote is the closest his safe storage bills have come to getting out of committee and to the House floor. He plans on bringing it back next legislative session.
The rejection of Stoddard’s bill comes on the heels of three instances this summer where children under 10 years old unintentionally shot themselves after finding an unsecured firearm. Two of the shootings were fatal, involving a 5-year-old boy who found a handgun in his parents’ bedroom and an 8-year-old boy who shot himself in a car while his mother was inside a gas station.
Although HB132 wouldn’t have imposed criminal penalties on the parents in these instances, Stoddard and other gun control advocates say that having laws on the books to encourage safe storage could still reduce the number of unintentional shootings.
“I can’t say that this is going to prevent these situations had the law been in place … but I think it sends a message that we care enough to do something,” Stoddard said. “This doesn’t target suicides, but would it help with suicides? Absolutely.”
The data back up that claim. A study this year from the Rand Corporation showed secure storage laws result in a decrease in unintentional firearm injuries and deaths among children.
A 2020 study published in the National Institute of Medicine found that firearm negligence laws resulted in a 15% reduction in firearm homicides, a 12% reduction in firearm suicides and a 13% reduction in unintentional firearm fatalities, all among children under 14 years old.
And according to an older study, published in 1997 in the National Institute of Medicine, unintentional shooting deaths among children younger than 15 years old decreased by 23% after states passed a secure storage law.
The bill did face some opposition from gun rights groups — a spokesperson from the Utah Shooting Sports Council said there are already negligence laws in place, and told the committee on Friday that the group didn’t feel like the state needs additional legislation. And the group Women for Gun Rights said the bill was a “slippery slope,” telling lawmakers that Utahns should be able to access their firearms quickly.
This story was originally published at UtahNewsDispatch.com.
