A personal family history of suicide and a JAMA study drawing attention to nearly 7 million U.S. children living with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm are renewing calls—echoed by law enforcement in metro Atlanta—for gun owners to secure firearms, espe
When a pistol sits within reach, the risk isn’t always a stranger in the dark. Sometimes it’s a drawer opened at the wrong moment, a loaded gun left unlocked, and a family that never gets the chance to fix what went wrong.
I grew up in the shadow of my grandfather’s suicide. It was my mother’s father. He shot himself in 1958, when my mom was 17. Despite that, I don’t hate guns—I actually like shooting them. I’ve fired big ones, including a .357 magnum and an AR-15, starting when I was in Boy Scouts.
But the way I see firearms changed when I read a recent study in JAMA. It said nearly 7 million U.S. children—ages 17 years and under—live in homes with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm. The number landed like a jolt. One part of me tried to frame it as inevitability in a country where guns are everywhere. Another part refused to accept it as fate, insisting there were practical steps that could reduce the odds.
Metro Atlanta police have been pressing that same point. Following a series of tragic shootings involving toddlers, they urged gun owners to secure their firearms.
The argument for “home protection,” a message reinforced by the gun lobby and entertainment industry, is built around the idea that people should rely almost entirely on themselves for safety. In this telling, a gun in the home is necessary to stop bad guys from hurting a family.
But the facts about firearms paint a different picture. Guns are used defensively in only about 1% of personal and property crimes—far less often than the gun industry has said.
The more likely ways a gun in a home is used are different categories of harm: suicide. criminal assault. criminal homicide. or accidental shooting. Mass shootings make up only a tiny portion of gun deaths, but they are horrific in an outsized way. In school shootings, child attackers most often acquire guns from the home.
For the families living with guns that aren’t secured, the gravity is even sharper. The presence of a gun in the home increases the likelihood of suicide, the article describes, because firearms are effective. People attempting suicide with guns are 90% successful, while other methods range from 57% down to 4%. Hanging and suffocation come close at 85%. The piece stresses the “finality” of firearms—no chance to step in. no chance to address mental health problems. and no chance to prevent generations of grief.
That’s why the author says the concern should be especially focused on children in households with unlocked loaded firearms. The article also notes that guns are now the leading cause of death among minors.
While that statistic is chilling, the story also turns on something more personal: the contrast between what people say they want and what they live with. The author says he and his wife do not have a gun in their home, where their 10-year-old and 14-year-old sons live.
Among close friends—who are fathers—the author found he was the exception. When he asked why they had firearms, they said it was for protection, which he says did not surprise him. What did surprise him was learning only recently that there was a gun in the home where he grew up.
His mother’s memories weren’t about protection at all. She told stories about her father—an immigrant’s talented son who patented a gyroscopic navigation device as an engineer. Scared by his death, she didn’t want to even look at a gun, and the author says he never saw one in their house.
His father, now 85, grew up in Central Florida where people did daily target practice in their backyards. He later told the author that he kept a pistol hidden away. When the author was 16 and the family moved to a rural area, his father loaded it and put it in his bottom clothes drawer.
“I felt like I needed it for protection. For us,” his father said.
The author points to the tension at the heart of the debate: while data shows crime is down and that having guns doesn’t make people safer. the cultural argument for gun ownership seems to be losing ground slower than those statistics suggest. In the author’s view. the country’s sheer scale—owning the most firearms per capita in the world—has made that protection narrative difficult to dislodge.
What the author does believe can change is how guns are stored. Gun locks and safes, he says, are a start, and they are cheap and often free at local police departments. He also points to newer security options—smart guns. smart holsters. and smart safes—designed so they can’t be activated without biometric input such as fingerprints or blood vessel patterns.
There is a message he wants gun owners, the gun industry, and the public to hear as clearly as the numbers in the JAMA study: the danger isn’t abstract. It’s inside homes. It’s in the gap between having a firearm and securing it—when a mistake or a moment of despair can change a family forever.
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