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Original article
Evaluation of a community-based safe firearm and ammunition storage intervention
  1. Joseph A Simonetti1,2,3,
  2. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar4,5,6,7,
  3. Cassie King8,
  4. Elizabeth Bennett8,
  5. Frederick P Rivara4,5,6,7
  1. 1 Hospital Medicine Program, Denver VA Medical Center, Denver, Colorado, USA
  2. 2 Rocky Mountain MIRECC, Denver VA Medical Center, Denver, Colorado, USA
  3. 3 Division of General Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado, USA
  4. 4 Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
  5. 5 Department Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
  6. 6 Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
  7. 7 Seattle Children’s Research Institute, Seattle, Washington, USA
  8. 8 Seattle Children’s Hospital, Seattle, Washington, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Joseph A Simonetti, Denver VA Medical Center, 1055 Clermont St, Denver, CO 80220, USA; joseph.simonetti{at}ucdenver.edu

Abstract

Background Safe firearm storage practices are associated with a lower risk of unintentional and self-inflicted firearm injuries among household members, though many firearms remain unlocked and/or loaded.

Objectives Conduct a preliminary evaluation of a community-based firearm safety intervention and assess participants’ preferences for firearm locking devices and their comfort with potential firearm safety counsellors.

Design/Methods Baseline event and follow-up surveys among adult participants to assess changes in firearm storage practices, including whether all household firearms were stored locked, all were unloaded, all ammunition was locked, and a composite measure assessing whether all firearms were locked and unloaded and all ammunition was stored locked.

Results A total of 206 out of 415 participants completed both surveys and were included. Nearly 9 in 10 respondents preferred the firearm lock box rather than a trigger lock. At follow-up, a significantly greater proportion reported that all household firearms were locked (+13.7%) and unloaded (+8.5%) and a non-significantly greater proportion reported that all ammunition was locked (+6.3%). A significantly greater proportion reported practising all three safe firearm and ammunition storage practices at follow-up (+12.6%). A majority reported they would be comfortable or very comfortable discussing firearm safety with various safety counsellors, though women were less likely to do so than men.

Conclusion This intervention that included distribution of a free, participant-selected locking device improved safe firearm storage practices among participants. Differences in participant preferences for devices and safety counsellors suggest that a ‘one size fits all’ approach may be inadequate in affecting population-level storage practices.

  • firearms
  • injury prevention
  • suicide
  • unintentional injury

https://doi.org/10.1136/injuryprev-2016-042292

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors All authors have access to the data, have contributed sufficiently to the project to be included as authors, have participated in writing the manuscript and have approved this final version for submission. JAS was responsible for data acquisition, conceptualisation and design of the study, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting the article, and final approval of the article for submission. ARR and FPR were responsible for conceptualisation and design of the study, analysis and interpretation of data, revising the article critically for important intellectual content, and final approval of the article for submission. CK and EB were responsible for data acquisition, conceptualisation and design of the study, analysis and interpretation of data, revising the article critically for important intellectual content, and final approval of the article for submission.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional analyses have been conducted. Study data are available upon request.

    • Correction notice This paper has been amended since it was published Online First. Owing to a scripting error, some of the publisher names in the references were replaced with ’BMJ Publishing Group'. This only affected the full text version, not the PDF. We have since corrected these errors and the correct publishers have been inserted into the references.