CT delegation: Congress likely to pass Ethan’s Law on gun storage

“This measure is the first in a series of common-sense steps, but it has powerful justification on its own.”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

The parents of Ethan Song, a Guilford teenager who died from an accidental gunshot, joined Connecticut’s entire congressional delegation on Wednesday in resuming the fight to establish national firearms storage standards.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal hopes that “Ethan’s Law,” requiring households with children under the age of 18 to lock all firearms, will be the first in a series of gun-safety measures that may become law now that both chambers of Congress and the White House are controlled by Democrats.

Other measures include universal background checks and red-flag laws to remove weapons from dangerous people.

“This political movement has really come of age,” Blumenthal told reporters during an online news conference. “To put it very simply, the grip of the gun lobby on Congress has been broken. We face a new day here when it comes to gun-violence prevention. This measure is the first in a series of common-sense steps, but it has powerful justification on its own.”

In a rare joint news conference with all seven of Connecticut’s Congressional delegation — all of them Democrats — senators and House members alike said they are optimistic about Ethan’s Law, named for Ethan Song, 15, who accidentally shot himself at a neighbor’s house in 2018.

Kristin and Mike Song, who succeeded in getting a similar law approved in the Connecticut General Assembly in 2019, started by showing a brief video of their son at

different ages and stressed that gun safes and gun locks are public-health measures just like seatbelts and car seats for infants.

“We don’t have a minute to waste,” Kristin Song said. “Do it for your children.” Mike Song displayed a small gun safe that can open by scanning a thumb. “Just like you can open your phone, you can secure your gun,” he said.

The Songs say the issue has nothing to do with the right to own firearms.

“We never viewed it as a Second Amendment issue,” Kristin Song said. “We viewed it as life-saving legislation for children.”

The law would include financial incentives for states to develop their own programs. About eight children a day or killed or wounded by firearms throughout the nation.

Third District U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who will reintroduce the bill, said she wanted to show the Song family video to other members of Congress. “Because of your courage, our nation can become a safer place,” DeLauro said to the Songs, stressing that as many as 4.6 million children live in homes where there are loaded, unlocked firearms. “This is a child-safety issue.”

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a national figure on gunsafety including the longstalled campaign for universal background checks, said similar storage laws are being enacted around the country.

National legislation can bring about a major drop in suicide, he said. With two thirds of gun deaths attributed to suicides, and research showing that if suicidal impulses can be rejected within 10 or 20 minutes, an inability to grab a gun can truly be the difference between life and death, Murphy said.

The campaign will still be tough even though President Joe Biden favors gun safety measures and Democrats now control the Senate, said U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District.

“It is going to require all of us to put noses to the grindstone and of course it’s going requires those activists out there to really put it to those who have stood in the way,” Himes said. “The idea that if you keep a gun in your home where there is a reasonable possibility that a child might have access to it — that that gun should not be secured — there’s not two sides of that. There is reasonableness and there is something, which I can’t characterize as anything other than sadism, if you don’t believe that to be true.”

“We can have a conversation about safe gun storage that does not diminish a person’s ability to own a firearm,” said U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, in whose district is Newtown, the site of the school massacre where 26, including 20 first graders, were murdered in 2012. “Anyone who is a registered, lawful gun owner should want to store their firearms safely and should want everyone else to do the same.”

Blumenthal said the delegation hopes Ethan’s Law could signal a momentum shift in a Congress that has been paralyzed for decades by a gun lobby that once favored locks for guns. “It should be as non-controversial as it was in the Connecticut General Assembly,” Blumenthal said.

The national version of Ethan’s Law was first introduced by DeLauro and 109 co-sponsors in May 2019, but failed.

“This political movement has really come of age,” Blumenthal said, naming a advocacy groups including Sandy Hook Promise and the Sandy Hook Action Alliance. “The NRA has imploded. It has sought to petition for bankruptcy in New York, which is a sign of not only its finances, but of its moral standing. I have no doubt — none — that this bill will pass here in the House and Senate. We are going to win because we have a powerful grassroots movement.”

Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media file photos Michael Song, left, of Guilford, watches as Gov. Ned Lamont signs Ethan’s Law at the Guilford Fire Department headquarters on June 13, 2019. A similar measure on rules for storage of guns in homes where there are young children has been proposed in Congress.

Holding a photo of his son Ethan, Michael Song, of Guilford, puts his face in his hand as his wife, Kristen, speaks before the signing of Ethan's Law on June 13, 2019.