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Two Republican state representatives have accused the Arizona Department of Health Services of coming after the Second Amendment rights of parents after the agency concluded in its annual Child Fatality Review Team report that there would be fewer children killed by guns in Arizona if there were fewer firearms in homes.
“We are appalled that the (Child Fatality Review Team) speaking on behalf of the Arizona Department of Health Services, is actually advocating for stripping Arizonans of their Second Amendment rights in their own homes,” Reps. Quang Nguyen and Selina Bliss wrote in a letter to Jennie Cunico, head of Arizona DHS, on Monday.
But the report, released in November, doesn’t actually advocate for that.
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Its firearm death prevention recommendations include “removing firearms from households with children, proper storage of all firearms, implementing initiatives aimed at limiting access to firearms,” as well as other prevention strategies. But the review team does not advocate for any policy that would see the government try to forcibly take guns away from anyone.
Instead it recommends bolstered gun safety regulations and better education of parents on the dangers of keeping guns in their households, especially when it comes to the risk of adolescent suicide.
The report says that the review team “believes that the most effective way to prevent firearm-related deaths in children is to remove all firearms in households with children,” but it does not recommend any government action or changes to state law to achieve that. The team’s top recommendation for parents, as well as for policymakers and schools, is to “increase public awareness that the most effective way to prevent firearm-related deaths in children and adolescents is to remove all firearms from households.”
DHS did not respond to the Arizona Mirror’s request for comment by the deadline for this story.
But Nguyen, of Prescott Valley, and Bliss, of Prescott, both interpreted the recommendations in the report as an attack on the constitutional rights of Arizonans to bear arms.
“Our state should focus on education and safe practices, not on extreme measures that undermine individual liberties,” Bliss said in a statement. “We stand firm in defending the Second Amendment rights of Arizona families.”
Nguyen and Bliss have led the Arizona House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee as chairman and vice chairman for the past two years, and Nguyen is set to again chair the committee when the new legislature convenes later this month.
Fueled by his childhood experience fleeing Vietnam just days before the fall of Saigon, Nguyen is a fierce advocate for gun rights and has used his role on the Judiciary Committee to block gun control proposals from being considered by the full House of Representatives.
“Proposals to strip citizens of their firearms are not only unconstitutional but also lack common sense,” Nguyen, who is also a firearms instructor, said in a statement. “While the report suggests reasonable safety measures for other risks, such as drowning, the (team) overreaches by advocating for the elimination of firearms entirely from homes with children.”
The annual report dug into the 853 child deaths that happened in the Grand Canyon State in 2023. The Child Fatality Review Team determined that 49% of those deaths were preventable, and that the second-most common cause of preventable deaths was firearm injuries, behind vehicle crashes.
Child shooting deaths have increased 171% in the past 10 years, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services, with 68 deaths in 2023, which were all determined to be preventable.
Suicides and homicides of children both increased in 2023, with 40 out of 61 child homicides perpetrated with firearms, and 44% of suicides using guns.
“Since the (team) determined that access to guns was the biggest risk factor for firearm deaths, (the team) believes that the most effective way to prevent firearm-related deaths in children is to remove all firearms in households with children because the presence of firearms in a household increases the risk of suicide among adolescents,” the team wrote in the report.
While the report says that parents of adolescents, especially those with a history of mental health or substance use issues, “should” remove all guns from their homes, it suggests any removal should be voluntary — not by forcible state action.
Any attempt to do so would almost certainly require a change to Arizona law, and such a law would never make it through the Republican-controlled state Legislature. Even if it did, it would immediately face constitutional challenges in court.
Far from advocating for “stripping Second Amendment rights,” as the Republicans claimed, the report says that lawmakers “should implement policies, programs, and initiatives focused on responsible firearm access and ownership in households with children.”
Some examples of that include:
- Requiring mental health screening and gun safety training for firearm purchasers
- Licensing and tracking firearm ownership
- Increasing public awareness of reporting stolen firearms and establish penalties for failing to report
- Increasing funding, access, and use of quality and affordable youth mental health and community intervention programs
- Providing bullying prevention programming for children and teens
- Increasing implementation of gang prevention programs for children and teens
The team also recommended that all gun owners should practice safe storage of their firearms by keeping guns unloaded and locked in a safe separate from the ammunition.
The annual report by the Child Fatality Review Team aims to “reduce preventable child fatalities in Arizona” through “prevention strategies, interdisciplinary training, community-based education, and data-driven recommendations.”
The recommendations in the report are aimed at aiding legislation and public policy, according to the report.
In their letter, Nguyen and Bliss told the Department of Health Services that proposed policy solutions must respect the rights and liberties of citizens.
“We urge you to direct the (team) to reconsider its unjustified attack on the Second Amendment and amend its Report,” they wrote.
The representatives’ declaration that any government efforts to reduce firearms deaths are tantamount to shredding a constitutional right aligns with those of Republicans across the country who have balked at and shut down efforts to implement gun control measures at the federal and state levels in response to an epidemic of mass shootings over the past 20 years.
This isn’t the first time that Nguyen and Bliss have teamed up to influence other government entities’ approaches to gun safety. In November, the Sedona City Council agreed to amend its prohibition of guns on city trails after Bliss and Nguyen notified the council and Attorney General Kris Mayes that the ban violated the Arizona law that allows cities to regulate the discharge of firearms in public parks, but not their possession.
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