KY bill would punish parents who leave guns where kids can get them. Will it go anywhere?
Recklessly leaving a gun where a child could find it and shoot someone would be a misdemeanor in Kentucky under a bill filed last month in the General Assembly.
However, versions of House Bill 120 — the Baby Dre Gun Safety Act, named for an 8-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed at a Louisville barbecue — have been filed repeatedly over the past decade.
So far, they have not been allowed a committee hearing or a vote.
Despite dozens of Kentucky children killed or wounded in accidental shootings in recent years, supporters of the bill fear this legislative session won’t bring them greater success in the Republican-controlled legislature that staunchly opposes restrictions on guns.
“It is a total disservice to the people of the commonwealth that we’re not looking at the legitimacy of this bill,” the sponsor, state Rep. George Brown Jr., D-Lexington, said in an interview on Tuesday.
“It’s not anti-gun. It’s about gun safety,” Brown said. “When the next child gets hurt ... I mean, responsible gun ownership is what needs to happen. Thoughts and prayers are fine, but that’s not enough when people die.”
A spokeswoman for House Republican leadership did not respond to a request Tuesday seeking comment on the bill’s likely fate this session.
Under HB 120, it would be a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail, to recklessly leave a gun unsecured in a home or vehicle if a minor without permission of his parents gets access to the gun.
The crime would be enhanced to a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail, if the child uses the unsecured gun to hurt or kill someone, even accidentally.
Charges could not be filed against the gun owner if a child broke into their home or vehicle and stole the weapon, only if the child lived with the gun owner or was invited onto their premises as a guest.
Gun safes, trigger locks
There are several ways gun owners can secure their firearms when children live with them, including a gun safe or trigger locks, said Kathi Crowe of Lexington, a member of Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America.
Crowe’s advocacy group, which opposes gun violence, was started after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 children and six adults.
Too often, Crowe said, parents assume their kids won’t find loaded guns hidden around the house, or they tell their kids to not touch their guns without permission, only to discover too late that children sometimes disobey.
“It is horrible and tragic. When a parent keeps a gun under the mattress, you know, what do they think is going to happen? The 2-year-old gets the gun and shoots the 4-year-old brother. It is horrible, and we read about that sort of thing all the time,” Crowe said.
“Until the parents are held accountable, it will keep on going,” she added. “It won’t stop. Our legislature has the power to hold these parents accountable.”
Charges seldom filed
The Herald-Leader reported in 2017 that at least 36 Kentucky children were accidentally shot — 15 fatally — in the previous five years by children who found loaded guns left lying around by an adult. Police and prosecutors seldom pursued criminal charges, saying the incidents were tragic but unintentional, the Herald-Leader found.
“Just one of those crazy accidents,” a county coroner told the Herald-Leader at the time, explaining a 5-year-old boy who accidentally shot his 2-year-old sister to death with a .22-caliber single-shot rifle.
More recently, a state watchdog committee that investigates the abuse of children who were under state supervision has urged Kentucky’s legislature to pass a safe storage law, as 26 other states have.
The Kentucky Child Fatality and Near Fatality External Review Panel’s 2024 report tallied at least 79 gun-related deaths and injuries to children from 2019 to 2023, including suicides, accidental shootings and shootings by their caretaker.
Many of the child-on-child shootings could be attributed to “neglect related to unsafe storage of firearms,” the panel said.
In one accidental shooting that left a 4-year-old boy dead at the hands of his 7-year-old brother, for example, a family kept a .410 shotgun next to the refrigerator, they panel said. The boys were playing “cops and robbers” with the gun, which the mother mistakenly believed was unloaded.
“Regardless of the type of gun, safe storage is an effective prevention strategy,” the panel said. “The Kentucky General Assembly, through the Judiciary Committee, should explore model legislative strategies to encourage and support safe storage of firearms.”
Gun safety bills stalled
Brown and other Democrats have sponsored safe storage bills in the legislature for years without seeing any action taken.
A Louisville gun safety activist, Luther Brown, made the initial push to George Brown and other lawmakers before he died in 2021.
Luther Brown witnessed a street shooting in 2006 that killed a woman and seriously wounded her 2-year-old daughter. Ten years later, his own 8-year-old grandson, Andre O’Neal Jr. — “Baby Dre” — was accidentally shot and killed inside a Louisville home when someone carelessly dropped a loaded gun during a barbecue.
Horrified by the violence around him, Luther Brown spent years preaching gun safety in Louisville, warning children to stay away from guns and passing out trigger locks to gun owners.
“Not every dope dealer is gonna want to use a gun lock,” he told the Herald-Leader in 2017. “But the mamas of the dope dealers sometimes insist on it. They know there are children in the house; they know how children are curious. It’s the mamas who come back to me sometimes and ask for a lock. If we can get locks on even a few of the guns out there, then you know what? At least that’s something.”
Speaking Tuesday, George Brown said the Democrats’ safe storage bills face a combination of Republican partisan hostility in Frankfort and ideological opposition to any safety measure that could be viewed as gun control.
Even a “red flag” bill last winter that would have allowed the temporary court-ordered removal of guns from Kentuckians whose loved ones feared they could become violent failed to advance, with gun industry lobbyists telling GOP legislative leaders to block it. The bill was debated following a mass shooting in 2023 that left six people dead, including the shooter, at a downtown Louisville bank.
“Because of the gun lobby, because of the gun manufacturers, anything dealing with guns just doesn’t move,” Brown said.
Another piece of gun-related legislation this year, House Bill 55, is sponsored by a Republican, state Rep. Kim Banta of Fort Mitchell, and co-sponsored by a Democrat, state Rep. Tina Bojanowski of Louisville.
Banta’s bill’s would establish civil liability and make it easier to sue the parents of children who caused deaths or injuries using firearms or explosives. The parents would have to have permitted the child to have the gun or bomb, and they would have to have known the child had a history of violent acts or had plans to act violently.
The only problem with Banta’s lawsuit bill is that it addresses gun-related tragedies after they’ve occurred, while Brown’s safe storage bill could educate gun owners and prompt them to prevent the tragedies, Crowe said.
“We need one for before, not just after,” Crowe said.
