Safer Homes, Safer Utah | Matt for Utah

Why this matters

About every 19 hours, someone in Utah dies from a gunshot. In 2024 that added up to 454 Utahns: fathers, daughters, neighbors, veterans, kids.

Most of them aren’t in the headlines. The mass shootings we see on the news are real and horrifying, but they are a small share of the toll. In Utah, more than eight in ten gun deaths are suicides. Most involve a gun that was loaded and not locked up.

That tells us where to start. A lot of these deaths can be prevented, and most of the steps that would prevent them are already supported by large majorities of Utahns, gun owners included.

454Utahns killed by guns in 2024, about one every 19 hours

83%of Utah gun deaths are suicides

73%of Utah gun deaths from 2017 to 2021 involved an unlocked gun

9 in 10Utahns support background checks on all gun sales

Source: Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, from CDC WONDER (2024). Other is the remainder of 454 total deaths.

Rights and responsibility

I’m a gun owner. So are nearly half of Utah voters. We hunt, we shoot, and many of us keep a firearm to protect our families. The Supreme Court has made clear that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, and I’ll defend it.

The Court has also made clear that the right has limits. In 2024 it ruled 8 to 1 that the government can keep guns away from someone under a domestic violence restraining order. Every idea in this paper fits within those limits. None of them takes a gun from a law-abiding owner.

In 2022, Congress passed the first major gun safety law in nearly 30 years. It strengthened checks on young buyers, funded mental health care, and helped states set up crisis programs. Fifteen Republican senators voted for it. Only one member of Utah’s six-person delegation did. Most Utahns wanted more than that from their representatives, and so do I.

Source: Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll, June 2022.

1. A background check on every sale

Federal law requires a background check when you buy from a licensed gun dealer. It doesn’t when you buy from a private seller online, through the classifieds, or at many gun shows. That means someone who could never pass a check at a store can often skip it with a few clicks.

I’d close that gap:

Every gun sale goes through a background check, the same quick check millions of Utahns already pass at the gun counter.
Common-sense exceptions: gifts and sales between close family members, loaning a gun while hunting or at the range, and handing a gun to someone facing an immediate threat.
Make the check easy to get. Any licensed dealer could run one for a private sale for a small, capped fee.

Background checks work. Since they became federal law in 1994, they’ve stopped roughly 4.8 million sales to people the law already says can’t have a gun: felons, domestic abusers, fugitives. The question is why we let the same people walk around the check by buying from a stranger instead.

You’ll hear that criminals will always find a way. Some will. But closing the gaps makes illegal guns harder to find, riskier to buy, and more expensive, the same way any market behaves when the easy supply dries up. And if checks really didn’t work, someone would be proposing to repeal the ones at the gun counter. No one is.

This isn’t a new or partisan idea. Ronald Reagan, a lifelong NRA member, publicly backed the Brady Bill’s background checks in 1991, a decade after he was shot by a man with a cheap handgun. In 2013, a background check bill written by a Republican and a Democrat won 54 votes in the Senate but fell short of the 60 it needed. About nine in ten Utahns support it today, including 80% of strong Republicans. It’s the closest thing to consensus in American gun policy.

2. A red flag law with real due process

Families are often the first to see the warning signs: a son talking about ending his life, a husband making threats. Right now, in Utah, they have almost no way to get help before something terrible happens. About 22 states have a “red flag” law, formally an extreme risk protection order. Utah has a voluntary list a person can put their own name on, but nothing a worried family can ask a judge for.

A red flag law has to protect the person on the other end, too. Mine would:

Let family members, household members, or police ask a judge to temporarily remove guns from someone who poses a serious danger to themselves or others.
Require a full court hearing within 14 days, where the person can tell their side, with a lawyer if they want one.
Require clear and convincing evidence for any order beyond that first emergency hearing.
Return the guns automatically when the order ends, after no more than a year unless a judge renews it after another hearing.
Make filing a false or spiteful petition a crime.
Let the person choose where the guns go, such as a trusted relative or a gun dealer, instead of a police evidence room.

In Congress, I’d fund states that adopt red flag laws with protections like these, and I’d urge Utah to pass one. Seven in ten Utahns already support it.

3. Lock it up

Most Utah gun deaths involve a gun that was loaded, unlocked, and within reach. A locked safe or a simple cable lock buys time, and time saves lives, especially when kids or someone in crisis is in the home.

I’d make locking up easy and affordable:

A federal tax credit of up to $300 for a gun safe, lockbox, or trigger lock.
Free cable locks at every gun store, police station, and sporting goods counter.
Safe storage education built into hunter safety courses and offered wherever guns are sold.

4. Treat suicide prevention like the emergency it is

A suicidal crisis often passes in minutes or hours. If a gun isn’t within reach during that window, the person is far more likely to survive, and most people who survive an attempt don’t go on to die by suicide. Time and distance matter.

Utah has led here before, from the 988 crisis line to gun shops and ranges that work with suicide prevention groups. I’d build on it:

Fund 988 and mobile crisis teams, especially in rural Utah, where gun suicide rates run the highest.
Make temporary storage easy. Let gun shops and ranges hold a friend’s or family member’s guns for a while during a hard time without paperwork getting in the way.
Partner with gun owners, not against them. The best suicide prevention messengers are fellow hunters, shooters, and veterans.

5. Age 21 for semi-automatic rifles

Under federal law, you have to be 21 to buy a handgun from a dealer, but only 18 to buy a semi-automatic rifle like an AR-15. Several of the deadliest school shootings in recent years were carried out by 18- and 19-year-olds who bought those rifles legally.

Some car rental companies won’t rent you a car until you’re 25. But you can buy an AR-15 at 18. If a rental car company can figure out that young adults need a little more time, Congress can too.

I’d set the age at 21 for semi-automatic rifles, the same as handguns. Shotguns and the bolt-action rifles most Utahns hunt with would stay at 18, and members of the military and law enforcement would be exempt. About eight in ten Utahns support raising the age.

6. Fund the agency that enforces the laws we already have

“Enforce the laws on the books” is good advice. You can’t do it without the people who enforce them.

The ATF is the federal agency that inspects gun dealers, traces guns used in crimes, and goes after gun traffickers. It’s already stretched thin: in 2024 it inspected fewer than 10,000 of the roughly 100,000 licensed gun dealers in the country, about one in ten. Instead of strengthening it, the administration’s 2026 budget proposed cutting the ATF by about a quarter and eliminating more than 500 of its dealer inspectors, a cut the Justice Department itself said would shrink its ability to oversee the gun industry by about 40%.

That’s backwards. Here’s what I’d do:

Increase the ATF’s budget and rebuild its inspector and agent ranks, so every licensed dealer gets a regular check-up and trafficking cases don’t sit for lack of agents.
Keep the focus on criminals, not law-abiding owners. More inspectors means honest dealers get help staying in compliance, and the few bad ones get caught.
Go after straw buyers and gun traffickers. Since 2022, buying a gun for someone who can’t legally have one is its own federal crime. Prosecutors should use it.
Get the records into the system. A background check is only as good as the records behind it. I’d help states send court, mental health, and domestic violence records to the national system quickly and completely.

7. Let the scientists count

You can’t fix what you won’t measure. For most of the last 30 years, Washington has made sure we couldn’t.

In 1996, Congress cut the $2.6 million the CDC had been spending on gun injury research and added a rule against using its money to “advocate or promote gun control.” Researchers took the hint, and federally funded gun research nearly disappeared for two decades. The congressman who wrote that rule, an Arkansas Republican and NRA ally, later said he regretted it and called for the research to resume.

Congress finally restored $25 million a year in 2020, split between the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. That’s still a rounding error. We spend roughly $60 in research for every gun death, compared with about $1,000 for every death in a car crash and about $3,000 for every death from cancer. And in each of the last two years, House budget writers have tried to cut it to zero.

Sources: Giffords Law Center, based on Stark and Shah, JAMA (2017); Scientific American (2023) for car crashes. Figures are approximate.

It’s also a bargain. Every gun death sets off costs that taxpayers and families carry for years: emergency rooms and surgeries, police investigations and trials, prison, lost wages, and support for the families left behind. Researchers at Johns Hopkins put the cost of gun violence in Utah alone at $4.9 billion in 2024, about $1,400 for every person in the state. The entire national research budget for gun injuries is $25 million. If research helps prevent even a small share of those deaths, it pays for itself many times over.

Car crashes are the model. Decades of federally funded research gave us seat belts, airbags, and graduated licenses for teen drivers, and the death rate on our roads fell dramatically. None of that required taking anyone’s car. Gun deaths deserve the same seriousness.

I’d:

Make gun injury research permanent and fund it at about $60 million a year across the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and the Justice Department, roughly what the country’s doctors and public health groups have asked for.
Keep the rule against advocacy. Taxpayers should pay for research, not lobbying. Let the evidence land where it lands.
Study the questions both sides care about, including how often guns are used in self-defense, which policies actually work, and which ones just burden law-abiding owners.
Fund the basic data. Protect the CDC’s violent death reporting system and start counting nonfatal gun injuries in every state, which we still don’t do well.

If a policy works, gun owners deserve to know. If it doesn’t, they deserve to know that too.

What I won’t do

Take guns away from law-abiding owners. The red flag law above is temporary, goes through a judge, and returns guns when it ends.
Ban the rifles and shotguns Utahns hunt with.
Pretend any single law will end gun violence. These steps won’t stop every tragedy. They will stop some, and that’s worth doing.

The bottom line

Utahns don’t have to choose between the Second Amendment and keeping our families safe. Background checks on every sale, a fair red flag law, safer storage, and a serious push on suicide prevention would save lives in our state every year. Most Utahns, gun owners included, already agree. It’s time for our representatives to catch up.

Why this matters

Rights and responsibility

1. A background check on every sale

2. A red flag law with real due process

3. Lock it up

4. Treat suicide prevention like the emergency it is

5. Age 21 for semi-automatic rifles

6. Fund the agency that enforces the laws we already have

7. Let the scientists count

What I won’t do

The bottom line

Sources

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