A digital toolkit designed to support adherence to Michigan’s newly enacted safe firearm storage law is now available through the University of Michigan.

Developed by the U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, the free online toolkit provides guidance on how to safely store firearms in accordance with the Michigan law that took effect in February. Michigan’s new Child Access Prevention, or CAP, law requires individuals to keep unattended weapons unloaded and locked with a locking device or stored in a locked box or container “if it is reasonably known that a minor is likely to be present on the premises.”

The toolkit:

• Outlines ways for health care professionals to assess risks and discuss safe storage with patients.
• Offers materials to schools and school districts to support safe storage at students’ homes. Schools can play a critical role in preventing school shootings, suicides and unintentional injuries by being a source of safe storage information.
• Provides information for parents and families, such as the do’s and don’ts of storage methods, the risks that children and adolescents have of injury or death by unsecured firearms, and other information to promote safety in their homes and the homes of family, friends and neighbors. More than one-third of adolescents in a firearm-owning household report being able to access a loaded gun within five minutes.

Safe storage methods can include firearm cases and safes or firearm lock boxes, or firearm cable and trigger locks.

“Research has shown that child access prevention laws save lives,” said April Zeoli, associate professor of health management and policy at U-M’s School of Public Health and policy core director at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention.

“Ensuring that children and teens don’t have access to a firearm is a critical step in preventing firearm-related harms, both intentional and unintentional. We know that when firearm owners securely store their weapons, the number of childhood firearm injuries and death decreases.”

When both firearms and ammunition are stored safely, children have a 78% lower risk of self-inflicted firearm injuries and an 85% lower risk of unintentional firearm injuries. Previous research has shown safe storage laws, when properly implemented, reduce intentional and unintentional firearm-related injuries and deaths among children and others.

The CAP law was part of a series of gun safety laws passed in Michigan 2023 in large part in response to mass shootings at Oxford High School and Michigan State University. The legislature also passed an extreme risk protection order, or red flag, law along with an updated background check law and a ban on firearm possession for domestic violence misdemeanors.

Prior to the release of the safe storage toolkit, the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention released an online Extreme Risk Protection Order Toolkit, which is also available for free online.