The Aroner-Scott-Hayden Firearm Safety Act, signed into law in California this past year, requires that all firearms sold, transferred, or manufactured in California be accompanied by specified warning labels and a firearm safety device (e.g. trigger lock) approved by Department of Justice (DOJ). The Act is unique because it also contains an evaluation component. It requires investigating law enforcement agencies to report to Department of Health Services (DHS), beginning on January 1, 2000, incidents in which a person under 19 years of age was injured or killed in a firearm suicide attempt or by an unintentional gunshot. Currently, DHS only obtains death and hospital discharge data for firearm injuries. Since most unintentional gunshot wounds are not fatal, we anticipate learning much more about these incidents with this reporting. Law enforcement agencies do not routinely document these injuries either, as they are not crimes, so DHS is working with DOJ to encourage compliance. The firearm safety devices will not be required until 2002, so this gives an opportunity to collect two years of baseline data for evaluation. Until the law can be evaluated after the firearm safety device requirement is implemented, these data will be useful to complement what we already know about unintentional and self-inflicted gunshot wounds. This session will provide a progress report on compliance and preliminary results for unintentional and self-inflicted youth firearm injuries in the new millennium.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, the participant will be able to: identify more fully the risk of unintentional or self-inflicted firearm injury to youth, describe one effort being taken in California's legislature to prevent firearm injuries to children, analyze the reporting form and discuss methodology proposed to evaluate this effort, and assess whether implementation of a similar effort would be useful in other locations
Keywords: Firearms, Child/Adolescent
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.