Sponsors (41)
The bill aims to reduce accidental and youth firearm injuries and improve victim remedies by promoting and enforcing secure gun storage and enabling federal action, but it does so by imposing criminal, civil, administrative, and financial burdens—and raising due-process and rights concerns—that could prompt legal challenges and costs for owners and governments.
Children and teens (and their families and schools) would face lower risks of accidental shootings, youth firearm injury, and some school-targeted violence because the bill encourages/establishes secure firearm-storage rules and programs.
Firearm owners and communities would be subject to clearer accountability (civil and criminal deterrents) for unsafe storage, which could reduce careless storage and downstream harm.
Congress and federal agencies would have a clearer constitutional basis to promote or set nationwide secure-storage rules, enabling more uniform protections across states.
Firearm owners (including parents) could face severe criminal penalties and fines — including misdemeanor/felony exposure and monetary penalties — for unsafe storage, even where intent is not clear.
Firearm owners may experience pre-conviction seizure/forfeiture of guns and other due-process and property-rights concerns, and many will view federal storage mandates or enforcement as an intrusion on ownership rights.
Individual gun owners could face new out-of-pocket costs (safes, locks) and financial liabilities (fines, higher insurance or defense costs) to comply with storage rules or defend against enforcement actions.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Creates a federal crime and fines for unsafe firearm storage at residences when a minor could access the gun or an ineligible resident could possess it, with exceptions and increased penalties if the gun is later used to harm someone.
Official title: Amend chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, to require the safe storage of firearms, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 25, 2025 by Richard Blumenthal · Last progress February 25, 2025
Makes it a federal offense for a firearm owner to store or keep a firearm that has moved in interstate commerce at a residence when they know or should know a minor could access it without permission or when an ineligible resident could access it, with limited exceptions for certain lawful storage or when the firearm is carried on the owner’s person. Penalties include civil fines, criminal fines and jail time if the improperly accessed firearm is used to injure or kill someone, and seizure/forfeiture of firearms stored in violation. Also adds a placeholder for a "Firearm Safe Storage Program" to existing crime-control law, and states Congress’s view that failing to comply with the new safe-storage rule constitutes negligence and may be treated as a legal/proximate cause of harms caused by a discharged firearm. A severability clause preserves the remainder if any provision is struck down.