When someone at Vox says they have “one big idea” to reduce gun deaths, you can probably guess what’s coming. Yet that’s what Rachel DuRose proclaimed yesterday and I’ll admit to being pleasantly surprised. DuRose isn’t focusing on mass shootings, self-defense killings, or gang violence in cities. She’s zeroing in on the 4,357 children killed by gunfire in 2020 in instances that were classified as either accidental shootings or youth suicides. Obviously, one child killed or wounded in such a fashion is too many, but the numbers are indeed alarming. To her credit, the author isn’t issuing a call for gun confiscation or sales restrictions. She is instead focusing on the question of safe gun storage in private homes, particularly when there are children living there.

My father’s unloaded firearms — a .22 pistol and a 20-gauge shotgun — were stored in a locked cabinet in the garage behind an array of boxes, bikes, and golf clubs. He worked across the country in California, and he kept the key with him at all times.

By most standards, my father’s weapons were safely stored, but he was in the minority of gun owners: 54 percent of the approximately 77 million gun owners in the US do not practice safe gun storage, according to a 2018 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health survey. And one-third of these households with dangerously stored guns are also home to children.

This is a fact that should alarm us.

My experience growing up was very different from that of Rachel DuRose. My father had three rifles and two shotguns. (Four rifles if you count the German rifle he brought home from World War 2 as a souvenir, but that one didn’t have a firing pin.) All of the long rifles were leaned up against the wall in a corner of our dining room near the front door. His two handguns, a .22 caliber target pistol, and a .44 magnum, were kept on the top shelf of my mother’s china cabinet in the same room. All of the ammunition was stored there as well. Dad was a stickler about unloading all firearms before putting them away, but the ammunition was not secured.

The cabinet was never locked. In fact, I don’t think it even had a lock on it, but it’s difficult to recall after all these years. The point is that both of my siblings and I always had access to the weapons, though we were instructed not to touch them. We all broke those instructions when my parents weren’t home, but thankfully there were never any accidental shootings in our home. When I received my first rifle at the age of 12 it was kept in the dining room with the others.

In hindsight, I understand what a bad plan my father employed. Children are naturally curious and they don’t always do as their told. And we have seen far too many accidental shootings, particularly the ones involving children, to simply write this off as part of the cost of doing business. Locked gun cabinets or at least lockable trigger guards aren’t too much to ask of people, at least when there are no adults at home who are actively using the firearms.

I still have a gut reaction leading me to cringe when someone brings up the idea of the government enacting laws and penalties for anything to do with gun possession by law-abiding citizens. But the reality is that there are still people out there who treat gun storage pretty much the same way my father did. I do believe that such requirements can not apply to a firearm that an adult resident keeps at hand for self-defense purposes, but they should take responsibility for ensuring that no children come near the weapon.

I do understand how there will always be objections to such laws when it comes to the issue of rapid access. In her article, DuRose quotes a social worker and gun owner named Johanna Thomas. Thomas answers the rapid access question by saying that she can have “access to my firearm in three seconds if I need it.” She also claims to keep her gun in a safe with the ammunition locked up separately.

Pardon my skepticism, but I’d like to see a demonstration of that if Ms. Thomas doesn’t mind. I sincerely doubt you could open a safe with either a key or a combination in three seconds even if you were standing next to it. And then you would still need to go to where the ammunition is, unlock that, and load the firearm. If you can manage all of that in even one minute you should consider entering the Olympics. And in a home invasion scenario, one minute may be fifty seconds too late.

But that’s why I believe we need exceptions to any such laws for the firearm you keep at the ready for home defense. All others could be stored as noted above, particularly when leaving the house and bringing in a sitter for the kids. In any event, I think this is a conversation that even the most ardent defenders of the Second Amendment (including yours truly) should be willing to engage in.