Advocates call for stronger laws to keep guns out of kids' hands, prevent tragedy
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Last weekend, a 3-year-old boy got his hands on a gun and accidentally shot his mother to death in a car in a south suburban supermarket parking lot.
CBS 2 Investigator Megan Hickey on Thursday dug deeper into the tragedy – and one solution that is working in other states.
The 3-year-old boy and his mom were sitting in their car outside the Food 4 Less store at 100 E. Sibley Blvd. in Dolton when the boy somehow found a gun, fired it, and killed his 22-year-old mother, Daejah Bennett.
The boy's 23-year-old father, Romell Watson, is now charged with a misdemeanor.
"This is a completely preventable tragedy," said Megan Kivarkis of Moms Demand Action Illinois.
Kirvarkis' group, is part of the national organization "Everytown for Gun Safety," which analyzed over 2,000 incidents like the one in Dolton across the country between 2015 and 2020. They found at least 15 cases in Illinois during that time.
They also discovered that states with "secure storage" or "child access prevention" laws also saw the fewest unintentional child shootings.
"We do have a safe storage law in Illinois," Kivarkis said. "We are working - volunteers like myself - to make those laws stronger."
Laura Cutilletta of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, explained that states with strong storage laws - like Massachusetts and California - create a liability for a gun owner just for leaving a gun stored unsafely.
Both states have some of the lowest rates of injury and death from unintentional child shootings.
Hickey: "In Illinois, someone actually has to get shot."
Cutilletta: "Someone has to get shot and die, or have great bodily harm."
Kivarkis says Moms Demand Action Illinois is pushing to strengthen our law here. They are also pushing for current legislation that would create a safe gun storage awareness campaign.
"It's making people aware that safe storage is a necessity, and it's normalizing the conversation," she said.
Kivarkis and Cutilletta say it is the best way to prevent heartbreaking scenes like the one in Dolton.
"Fix Illinois' law, improve, shore up the loopholes - and you know, there's lots of other states out there, that would serve as a model for what Illinois could do to strengthen its laws," Cutilletta said.
The state with the most injuries and deaths from unintentional child shootings was Louisiana. They had 98 shootings over a six-year period, and they have no gun storage laws.
