The Importance of Responsible Gun Ownership

Having firearms in our homes is a lasting American tradition. We as a people are proud of our heritage and our freedom to bear arms. All men are created equal, as long as every man has a gun in their hand.  

However, given the nature of guns, tragedies happen. Mass shootings, crimes of passion, suicide, hunting accidents, a boy accidentally shooting his little sister. 

According to a 2018 article published in the Journal of Urban Health (Available here through the  U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine NIH/NLM): "In 2015, 1468 US children under the age of 18 died as the result of a gunshot wound and almost 7000 were non-fatally injured with a gun. Of those children who died by firearm, 40% died either by suicide or as the result of an unintentional firearm injury, most often inflicted by themselves or another child. In contrast to firearm deaths among adults, most firearm deaths of children, especially younger children, occur in their own homes. For suicides and unintentional deaths, the gun used in the death almost always comes from the child’s home." According to the study, 4.6 million children live in a household where a firearm is kept loaded and unlocked. The article concluded by calling for "more active and creative efforts to reduce children’s exposure to unsafely stored firearms."

While many out there may feel that proper gun education at an early age should make locking up their guns unnecessary, the fact is that guns still harm around 10,000 U.S. children each year. Even if you were to disregard the statistics, preventing harm to your own children is just one of the benefits of safely storing your firearms. Simply put, a locked gun is far less likely to cause a tragedy than an unlocked one. 

However, most gun locks render a firearm inoperable in emergencies, which defeats the main purpose of owning a firearm. This is a problem we at BISON set out to solve. We believe that no compromises can be made when it comes to the safety of loved ones, and this belief translated into the design of our lock. We chose the trigger lock format as the least obtrusive way to safely secure a firearm. Unlike a safe or lockbox, a trigger guard allows the function of all other parts of the firearm, including the physical movement of the gun. Incorporating biometrics in the lock allows easy and instantaneous access, making sure that time is never a factor in tough situations. A 360-degree fingerprint scanner further improves accessibility in the dark and provides the functionality you would expect in an emergency situation.