Programs

Background Checks

We are seeking improvements in the reporting of prohibited names to background check systems, with an emphasis on violent criminals and people found to be a danger to themselves or others. Our objectives include:

Reporting which states have applied for and received federal grant money for reporting purposes.
Urging state governments to issue an annual report on their participation and progress in reporting such names to the state and/or federal system(s).
Analyzing state reports or lack of state information.
Supporting a congressional effort to shift from a policy to a legal requirement in the Department of Defense to report prohibited names to the background check system.
Advocating for states to clear any backlogs in the background check system (e.g. the 55,000 convicted felons in Virginia since 2000).

Safer Country is leveraging existing relationships with federal and state legislators, other elected officials, and other gun violence prevention organizations to move our priorities to the top of the agenda.

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Red Flag / Temporary Firearm Removal Laws

21 states and the District of Columbia now have some variation of this law. Depending upon the state, law enforcement personnel, medical professionals, family members, and intimate partners may seek such an order.

These laws are intended to prevent gun homicides and suicides while protecting the individual right to due process. In all versions, the party from whom a gun or guns have been taken has the right to a swift court hearing, usually within 14 days, to seek to reclaim their gun or guns.

In just a few years, they have already proven valuable. “Remarkably, firearms are used in only 6% of suicide attempts but cause more than half of all suicide deaths….Red-flag gun laws have been shown to reduce firearm suicide rates, with one suicide averted for every 10 to 20 gun removals.” –Brian Barnett, M.D., Addiction Psychiatrist, Cleveland Clinic’s Lutheran Hospital, StatNews.com, 2019.

One life is estimated to be saved for every 10 temporary gun-removal actions because of a legal determination that someone is a danger to themselves or others. –Criminal Justice and Suicide Outcomes with Indiana’s Risk-Based Gun Seizure Law, Jeffrey W. Swanson, PhD.

As seen above, the term ‘red flag’ is commonly used to describe these laws. Due to concerns raised about this term from the mental health community though, many advocates prefer to call them ERPO’s/ Extreme Risk Protection Order laws and the two major gun law reform groups prefer to call them extreme risk laws.

In some states though, they are called SRPO/Substantial Risk Protection Order laws (Virginia) or FRO’s/Firearms Restraining Order laws (Illinois). The term Gun Violence Restraining Order law has also been used.

Safer Country believes that these gun violence prevention temporary firearm removal laws are essential to preventing gun violence and deaths by allowing law enforcement to intervene at a critical moment.

Critically though, to be fully effective, the public must know about these laws and how to use them.

Importantly, whether law enforcement initiates an investigation or is requested to do so, it must take care to intervene with sensitivity, especially in communities of color. Teaming police officers with behavioral health experts is one way to do that and we applaud police departments that are experimenting with this or are doing so. They are on the cutting edge of this issue.

Read about our Red Flag Public Awareness Campaign at safercountry.org/red-flag-campaign

Fingerprinting Prior to Gun Sales

Safer Country is advocating for systems that ensure that prohibited parties are prevented from acquiring firearms. Fingerprinting is already working in a number of states to reduce gun homicides.

According to Politifact, Daniel W. Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, cited the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as finding that “fingerprint-verified handgun purchaser licensing have much lower rates of gun homicide than those that do not.”

This excerpt from an article in The Trace explains the issue more fully.

Under federal law, … only buyers of particularly destructive weapons — such as machine guns — must undergo fingerprinting. At least six states have extended this to also include purchases of handguns. But in Illinois, as in most of the country, handgun buyers are checked just through basic biographical and descriptive information.

“It’s a massive hole,” said Mark Jones, a former agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who is senior policy director for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence in Chicago. “The question is: How many guns slip through it? There’s so much opacity it’s difficult to understand the scale.”

Though little research has been done on how many prohibited gun owners pass a background check for lack of fingerprint checks, research regarding employment and occupational licensing checks has found that records often are missed when checks are based on just a name and biographical information.

“Fingerprints would improve the accuracy of the system. We know that, so why aren’t we doing it?” said Joseph Vince Jr., who previously ran the ATF’s Crime Gun Analysis Branch and is a criminal justice professor at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland.

— Illinois Lawmakers Want to Fingerprint Gun Buyers, Brian Freskos, April 11, 2019

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Safer Storage and Transportation

Safer Country is advocating for laws which make it a crime to improperly store or transport firearms. It is essential that we take action to prevent children from being harmed in homes, and prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands.

On November 20, 2019, Safer Country held its launch party and featured Mike and Kristin Song who spoke movingly of their 15-year-old son whom they lost to a gun incident when he was playing in a neighbor’s home. They took their grief and channeled it into the energy needed to pass Ethan’s Law, named for their son.

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont’s press release on the occasion of his signing the bill into law explained it this way:

[Ethan] was shot and killed on January 31, 2018 while handling a .357 Magnum pistol at a neighbor’s house.

The pistol was one of three unattended firearms he and a friend knew were kept in a bedroom closet owned by the friend’s father. The firearms were stored in a cardboard box inside of a large Tupperware container. While each of the weapons were secured with operable gun locks, the keys and ammunition for the firearms were located inside of the same box.

At the time of the shooting, it was a class D felony to improperly store a firearm or leave it where a minor could get access without permission of a parent or guardian, but only if that stored gun was loaded. Prosecutors found no evidence to show that the gun was loaded at the time it was accessed, so the owner was not charged with a crime.

The bill Governor Lamont signed, Public Act 19-5, amends that statute to require that firearms be properly stored regardless of whether they are loaded or unloaded. It also changes the definition of a “minor” to anyone up to age 18, up from 16 under current law.

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This is an example of the kind of laws we need in America to send a message that guns are seriously dangerous and how guns and ammunition are stored are top priority issues given that the lives of children and others are at stake.