H.R. 1564: Ethan's Law

Named Ethan's Law, H.R. 1564 would put a federal safe-storage rule on the books for the first time. If you control a home and know, or reasonably should know, that a child could reach your firearm without a parent or guardian's permission — or that someone living there is legally barred from owning a gun — you'd have to lock it in a secure storage device, keep it somewhere a reasonable person would call secure, or keep it on or near your person.

The penalties climb in steps. A plain violation runs $500, and because it's charged per firearm, more than one unsecured gun could mean more than one fine. If a child or a barred resident then gets the gun and someone is injured or killed, the person who stored it improperly could face a criminal fine, up to 5 years in prison, or both.

The bill reaches past fines and jail. A firearm stored in violation could be seized and forfeited. A Sense of Congress attached to the bill says a storage violation should count as negligence in a lawsuit, and should still be treated as a legal cause of the harm even when someone else fired the gun on purpose.

Supporters lean on the bill's findings. Those findings cite 73% of children under 10 in gun-owning homes knowing where the firearm is and 36% having handled it, say 65% of deadly school shootings involved a gun taken from the shooter's home or a relative's, and count nearly 2 million firearms reported stolen over the last decade.