This week marked five years since we launched End Family Fire, our groundbreaking safe firearm storage program. We created End Family Fire to address incidents of family fire, which include unintentional shootings, firearm suicide, and firearm misuse. Since 2018, End Family Fire campaign assets have been seen more than 3.6 billion times.
Our program takes a non-political approach, working with gun owners and non-gun owners alike, to reduce forms of family fire by encouraging safe firearm storage — which means storing firearms locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition.
When the program launched five years ago, our efforts solely focused on unintentional shootings among children. But since then, we’ve expanded our work to tackle firearm misuse and the deadliest form of gun violence: firearm suicide, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths in America.
This is the focus of our latest campaign called “Safe Stories,” a multimedia campaign and immersive digital experience that shares the real stories of seven people who contemplated taking their own life with a firearm. The effort encourages safe gun storage to prevent a moment of crisis from turning into a permanent tragedy.
We know our End Family Fire program helps save lives. In fact, 48% of gun owners who saw our campaigns changed how or where they keep their firearms to store them in a safer manner.
So, as we mark the fifth anniversary of End Family Fire, will you join us in raising awareness about the importance of safe firearm storage? By simply sharing our PSAs and resources, you have the power to save lives.
