Guilford County sheriff’s office gives away free gun locks this week

Free gun locks were being handed out at the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office as officials tried to interrupt a pattern of child-involved shootings with a practical step that could save lives. The office was giving away a limited number of locks between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. throughout the week, part of the fourth annual NC S.A.F.E. Week of Action.

The push landed with added urgency after the May 25 shooting death of 8-year-old Gabriel Sanchez in Reidsville. Deputies responded around 4:40 p.m. to a home at 7679 U.S. Highway 29 North, where Gabriel was found with an apparent gunshot wound and later died. Investigators said the firearm had been left unsecured and accessible to multiple juveniles in the home. Luis Sanchez Jr., 19, was charged with misdemeanor storage of firearms to protect minors.

North Carolina law puts that risk into legal terms. G.S. 14-315.1 makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor when a person living with a minor stores or leaves a firearm in a way an unsupervised minor can access it and then gets to the gun without permission. In other words, the issue is not only moral or emotional, but criminal when children can reach a weapon that should have been locked away.

Chris O’Bryant, a training sergeant who oversees firearm training and gun range operations for the sheriff’s office, said children often cannot tell a real gun from a toy and may pull the trigger before understanding the danger. That is why the lock giveaway matters as more than a symbolic gesture: it is an attempt to change storage habits inside homes where firearms are already present.

Governor Josh Stein proclaimed June 1-7, 2026, as the fourth annual NC S.A.F.E. Week of Action. The campaign, launched in 2023 by the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, works with communities, public safety agencies, health care organizations and other local partners to promote safe firearm storage. NC S.A.F.E. says firearms are the leading cause of injury-related death for children and youth in North Carolina, and deaths among children and youth more than doubled from 2019 to 2021.

The numbers behind the campaign are stark. NC DHHS says child firearm injury hospitalizations rose 120% from 2016 to 2020, while child emergency department visits for firearm injury rose 68% from 2017 to 2021. More than half of youth suicides and 80% of youth homicides in 2021 involved a firearm. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions says North Carolina’s overall gun death rate increased 39% from 2014 to 2023, and firearms were the leading cause of death among young people ages 1-17 in 2023.

For Guilford County, the question now is whether the locks reach the households most at risk before another unsecured gun becomes another child’s last mistake.