A chilling video is reminding gun owners in the United States that having firearms at home can be deadly — even if they are supposedly stored in a safe place.
The video, created by The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence as part of the #EndFamilyFire campaign, hones in on exactly how eight children are shot at home each day in the U.S.
It’s called “family fire,” meaning accidental shootings by a gun that is improperly stored within a home.
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The video, created in partnership with the Ad Council, features a dialogue between a father and a young son inside their home.
The son asks the father about their family gun. At first, the dad brushes it off saying it’s hidden and unloaded.
Slowly, the dad realizes the gun isn’t stored as safely as he thinks.
“But it is our gun,” the boy says. “In our home.”
The child then disappears.
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The video has sparked conversation online about whether families should store guns within a home, especially in light of a recent death in Delaware.
Earlier this month, a 12-year-old boy named Tymier Shelby died after an accidental self-inflicted shooting, an ABC News affiliate reported.
Shelby shot himself in the chest with what police believe was a gun owned by the family, and later died in hospital.
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Kyleanne Hunter, who works with the Brady Center, explained that the video hopes to shift the narrative away from blame and toward taking preventative action.
“Rather than mudslinging and name-calling, we’re focusing on how can we act to keep our kids alive,” Hunter said, according to NBC News.
“And that might open the door to more discussion about how to end gun violence.”
A look at the numbers
According to a 2018 study published in the Journal of Urban Health, children are present in about 13-million households in the U.S. that contain guns.
In about 2.7 million of those homes, the guns are stored unlocked and loaded.
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Numbers released by the federal government in 2016 show that 3,000 children were unintentionally shot in 2016 — 127 of them died — as a result of family fire.
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