I sent this to the Albuquerque Journal after D'Val Westphal seemed interested, but it seems to have been dropped down the newspaper's memory hole. Anyway, I'll post it here.
Why did HB 9 fail?
HB-9, the safe firearm storage bill, failed in large part because there was the classic disconnect between rural and urban interests. If such a bill is ever to pass, these parties need to find common ground, recognizing that urban youth violence is a serious problem while protecting legitimate youth firearm activities.
Minors have some legitimate reasons to access firearms. For example, hunting, informal target shooting, 4H, or any number of organized shooting activities. Perhaps the bill could have gotten far more buy in if an explicit addition was made to recognize that minors have legitimate reasons, other than armed defense, to be accessing rifles and shotguns (minors cannot possess handguns on their own under most conditions). The bill could have explicitly stated it is not a crime if a minor fetches from storage, with responsible adult approval and appropriate training, a firearm to be used for a lawful youth activity.
Still, the bill improved as it moved forward. In the original, while safe storage was mandated, no credit was given if a minor defeated a good faith storage system. The substitute bill provided reasonable legal protections for adults by clarifying how "safe storage" would be credited and also gave credit for training. I testified in favor at the House Judiciary Committee hearing. Still, I understand that rural representatives in the House Appropriations and Finance Committee hearing were concerned the bill would impede lawful and traditional youth firearm activities, something that could have been explicitly solved by a minor re-write as I said in the preceding paragraph.
Finally, outreach is critical. I provide to one sponsor academic literature (Crifasi et al and Rowhani-Rhabar et al, and here is a RAND review of the literature) asserting that to effectively promote safe storage, we must reach out to and enlist gun owner organizations and police to cooperate with gun violence prevention organizations to reinforce safe gun ownership behaviors and further, we must make safe storage devices readily accessible and affordable. Creating new law alone without active followup may have negligible effect because the folks who most desperately need to hear the message usually are out of the loop unless we reach out to them. Charging adults after kids kill kids misses the point of promoting safe storage before any harm is done.
