Utah has seen a rash of publicized firearm tragedies involving children.
An 8-year-old boy died after he accidentally shot himself with a loaded gun left in a car while his mom was in a Lehi convenience store on Sept. 2. A woman and her three children were found shot to death in a car in West Haven on Sept. 3 — it was later ruled a murder-suicide by authorities. And on Aug. 22, a five-year-old boy in Santaquin accidentally fatally shot himself with a gun he found in his parent’s bedroom.
It won’t be known until the end of the year how many children have died because of firearms, said Joel Johnson, communications manager with the Utah Department of Health and Human Services’ Violence and Injury Prevention Program. However, the number of youth who have gone to an emergency room this year for a firearm-related injury is on track to exceed 2023’s total.
“Unfortunately, we’re probably going to exceed the 62 that we saw last year,” Johnson said.
Through July of this year, Johnson said 40 kids have gone to the hospital for firearm-related injuries.
State mortality data from the last few years, up until 2023, had shown a promising trend.
In 2020, 30 Utahns under the age of 18 died because of firearms. That number decreased to 20 in 2021 and 18 in 2022. But it increased in 2023 when 26 Utahns between the ages of 0 and 17 died. Johnson said the numbers include suicides, homicides, accidents, intimate partner violence and law enforcement.
He added the vast majority of firearm-related injuries and deaths are from handguns.
While Johnson can’t speak to the firearm-related injuries in 2024, in previous years a majority of the guns involved in youth firearm-related deaths were not in locked storage.
“Injuries can be avoided if we just follow some basic rules.”
That includes, Johnson said, safely storing guns and educating kids on how to act around firearms, emphasizing that they are not toys and should never be used without adult supervision.
Kelly Drane, research director for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said there has been an increase in unintentional shootings among children in the U.S. over the last couple of years. She thinks the answer is to go beyond education and focus on policy.
“We need to put actual barriers in place to make sure that kids are not accessing guns, and these laws are one way to encourage that behavior among parents, grandparents and other adults that spend time around children,” Drane said.
Some states, including Colorado and Nevada, she noted, have passed child access prevention laws that “impose a penalty on someone who fails to secure an unattended firearm and leaves it accessible to an unsupervised minor.” In all, 26 states and the District of Columbia have safe storage laws but they vary in terms of penalties and liabilities according to Giffords.
A RAND Corporation report found these laws are associated with a decrease in unintentional firearm injuries and deaths among kids, as well as a decrease in self-injuries or suicides among youth.
However, Drane said Utah does not have one of these laws.
“I think that is something that Utah, particularly in light of these incidents over the last few weeks, needs to take a serious look at,” Drane said.
The state does have a weaker version that holds Utah parents and guardians criminally liable under state code if they are aware that their child has a weapon and don’t make reasonable efforts to remove it.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill filed charges against a gun owner alleging aggravated child abuse after a 3-year-old in Magna accidentally shot himself in the foot in early August.
