Child Fatality Review 3. Firearm Deaths A total of 20 children were killed by firearms in 1998. Of those, seven were unintentional deaths, seven were suicides, and six were homicides. A firearm death cannot occur if the victim or perpetrator does not have access to a firearm.
Trigger locks can similarly make firearm storage safer.
Firearms stored in this way may decrease the risk of impulsive suicides and homicides because of the time required to access and load the gun. Firearms stored in this way may also decrease the risk of unintentional shootings, since children can be effectively prevented from accessing those firearms. Eight percent of adults who have children reported on the 1998 Behavioral Risk Factor Survey that they had an unsafely stored firearm in their home. Extrapolating from the survey this means that about 39,000 adult Oregonians store firearms unsafely and an estimated 64,000 children are exposed to firearms that are stored unsafely in the home. There were seven unintentional firearm injury deaths in 1998.