Louisville Metro is giving away 5,000 free gun locks in an effort to promote safe gun storage. (Divya Karthikeyan / LPM )Louisville resident Anitra Gunn lost her 23-year-old son to gun violence. Now, she thinks about gun safety as she’s watching her 3-year-old granddaughter grow up, get curious and explore her surroundings.While Gunn doesn’t own a firearm herself, her experiences spurred her to encourage gun safety practices to protect kids in her community. On Tuesday, she picked up a few gun safety locks for some friends who are parents at Louisville Metro’s booth in the L&N building on West Broadway.“A lot of people don’t know. They just don't know what the proper precautions are and they don't think about it. They think if they put it up high enough that [children] won't be able to get it. But kids climb. It's just like with medicine, you gotta keep it in a lock box,” she said.OSHN is collaborating with Kentucky Dept. for Community Based Services to give away locks from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the L&N Building through Friday. An additional 1,000 locks will go to the state’s child welfare and family support staffers to provide them to families.A typical gun lock is a rubber coated cord with a keyed padlock, and prevents a person from using the gun by not letting them load ammunition or by blocking the barrel and chamber. The cord is threaded through the ejection port and out the unloaded magazine well, then secured with a lock. It can be used on most types of firearms.Some states have safe storage laws for all gun owners, while others are only aimed at issuing penalties if a child gets a hold of a gun. In Kentucky, there are no laws requiring unattended guns to be stored in a particular way. Poor storage puts children at risk of accidental firearm injuries and deaths.That risk isn’t limited to small children, but includes teenagers who are in crisis or struggling with mental health issues and suicidal ideation.Seven Kentucky children died from firearm-related injuries in 2022, according to the state’s latest child fatality review data. Four of those deaths were suicides, and the review panel found most of those cases were connected to unsafe storage practices.Shannon Moody is the chief policy and strategy officer at Kentucky Youth Advocates, a nonpartisan organization advocating for policies that protect children and teenagers. Parents and caregivers in situations of accidental firearm injuries have told Moody they wish they had known about safe storage practices sooner, she said.“Whether you have a small child that's curious or maybe an adolescent or teen that is struggling with mental health issues or suicidal ideation, knowing the risks in your home and knowing how to mitigate those will be really important,” she said.Moody said pairing a tool like a gun lock with counseling parents on how to store their firearms can go a long way.“If we're not helping our parents understand and be educated around that natural curiosity and proclivity of kids, they may not know that it's really important to store their firearms in a place where either their children are not able to reach them, or ideally with a gun lock or in a safe,” she said.Since 2005, every gun purchase must come with a gun lock per federal law. It’s important to have different points of contact for educating people on safe storage practices, Moody said. That can happen at a doctor’s appointment, a routine wellness check at home, at a point of sale, or just checking in with a friend.