We recently posted on the likely impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York Rifle and Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen on gun safety.  In Bruen, the Supreme Court ruled that all “law-abiding” Americans have a Second Amendment right to carry a gun outside the home for self-defense.

Several states quickly responded by considering or enacting new laws regulating guns and gun owners.  At the invitation of the Supreme Court, among the most popular provisions in those laws are regulations creating safe spaces, i.e., sensitive places where public carry of guns will not be allowed. Even Justice Thomas acknowledged in his opinion for the majority in Bruen that it may be appropriate to ban public carry in “legislative assemblies, polling places and courthouses.”

New York, for example, recently banned public carry of guns in the following places:

• Airports
• Bars and restaurants that serve alcohol
• Courthouses
• Daycare facilities, playgrounds and other locations where children gather
• Educational Institutions
• Emergency shelters, including domestic violence shelters and homeless shelters
• Entertainment venues
• Federal, state, and local government buildings
• Health and medical facilities
• Houses of worship
• Libraries
• Polling sites
• Public demonstrations and rallies
• Public transportation including subways and buses
• Times Square

The New York law also importantly makes “no carry” the default for private property unless the property owner chooses to allow guns.  Other states including New Jersey, California and Massachusetts are considering similar provisions.

These laws are sensible and deserve strong consideration as gun safety measures.  Certainly, there are public places where the presence of guns not only generates risk of mass shootings, but also high risk of accidental shootings, together with ever-present risks to innocent bystanders.

However, safe spaces laws have significant potential unintended consequence.  Law abiding gun owners committed to public carry, rightly or wrongly, will, by necessity, be forced to stow their guns and to leave them unattended as a condition of entering a safe space. Most often, those guns will be stored temporarily in vehicles. 

The increased risk of unattended storage of guns in vehicles has several important consequences that legislators need to address in conjunction with creating safe spaces:

• Most importantly, guns in cars are vulnerable to theft.  A recent study by researchers at Everytown for Gun Safety strongly suggests that thefts from cars is the leading source of stolen guns. Everytown’s analysis of FBI crime data from 231 American cities in 38 states revealed that “in 2020, an estimated 77,000 guns were reported stolen [from cars in the studies cities] alone. This count is likely a conservative estimate since only 15 states require gun owners to report lost and stolen guns, so many missing guns go unreported.”

As people park near a safe space such as a church or restaurant, many will simply put their guns under a seat or in the glove compartment, sometimes fully loaded.  Cars have windows, of course, and even the careful storage of a gun is likely to be a visible act. Undoubtedly, some gunowners will be less careful and will, for example, exit their vehicle and then reach back inside to put a gun away.

By definition, if a gun is stolen, it is in the hands of a criminal. At best, it will enter the shadow marketplace for unregulated stolen guns.  At worst, those guns will be available almost immediately for criminal activity, gun violence, suicides or the kind of unsafe horsing around that kids who think they understand how to safely use a gun typically engage in. 

By way of example, according to an affidavit filed in connection with a recent Missouri case, four boys, including a 13 year-old, stole a gun from a car and removed the magazine.  While playing with the gun later that night, one of the boys apparently put the magazine back in the gun, without realizing that it contained live rounds, and gave it to the 13-year old. The 13-year old then unintentionally shot and killed his 14-year old friend, Zavier Mendoza. The surviving boys then ran away and tossed the gun into the woods, where it was later found. 

Those looking to steal a gun will undoubtedly quickly come to understand that guns, particularly in states with high rates of public carry, will mostly easily be available in cars parked outside safe spaces.

• Another problem associated with storing guns in cars is that gun accidents are common when guns are moved from holsters, pockets, waistband, backpacks and purses into the interior of a car.  Whenever guns are being handled, there is risk of an accidental trigger pull, or in some cases of the type of jostling that can cause a gun to go off even without the trigger being depressed.  The tight space involved in a vehicle increases the risk.

• Another problem is that children, not infrequently, find guns that are poorly stored in cars.  Children can happen upon a gun under a seat, or in a car console or glove compartment. Equally likely though is that kids know exactly where their parents store their guns. When a child finds a gun in a car, there are frequent reports that they unintentionally shoot themselves or others.

There are three potential solutions that will mitigate these risks that legislatures should consider in combination:

The first is to prohibit storage of a gun within 500 yards of a safe space.  That provision would diminish the risk that parking spaces near safe spaces will become targets for thieves and perhaps reduce the likelihood that people who intend to travel to a safe space will carry their guns. 

The second is to ramp up the legal requirements for safe storage of guns in cars.  Safe storage in cars should be exclusively in locked compartments affixed to the vehicle for the purpose of gun storage, manufactured to regulated standards designed to effectively deter access to thieves and children. These laws should also require that guns be stored unloaded without ammunition in the locked compartment.  There should of course be significant penalties for failure to comply, together with robust requirements for self-reporting of thefts.

Finally, guns for public carry should be required to have effective manual safeties and those safeties should always be engaged when the gun is in any public space. Safeties prevent accidents of the type that often happen in cars.  

Absent careful attention to the risks of firearm storage in cars, it may be more sensible to reduce or limit the creation of “safe spaces.”  It makes little sense to mitigate the heightened risks associated with public carry by responsible gunowners, without also considering the likely risk of creating situations where guns will almost certainly be left unattended.