SAN DIEGO – June 1, 2026 – Two weeks after a deadly shooting at the San Diego Islamic Center, a billboard is reminding people in San Diego’s Clairemont neighborhood that many gun tragedies can be avoided by securely storing firearms kept at home.
The billboard on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, east of Convoy Street, urges residents to “Save a life. Lock up your gun.”
The billboard is the work of the Alliance to End Gun Violence, which planned its Secure Storage billboard campaign two months before the May 18 shootings at the Islamic Center left five dead and a city in grief.
“Sadly, the senseless tragedy at the Islamic Center will be one among thousands of preventable shootings this year that result from unauthorized users getting hold of lethal firearms,” Alliance president Therese Hymer said. “Secure storage is a message that Americans need to hear every day.”
The Alliance billboard’s debut was intended to coincide with the start of summer, when parents need to be especially diligent about secure gun storage, Hymer said.
School-age children spend more time at home in the summer, and are more likely to be unsupervised when they do. This magnifies the danger of unsecured firearms, and the importance of following state and local laws that require guns be locked when not in use.
“If you care about protecting children — from unintentional shootings, suicide, or mass shootings — nothing beats securely storing your firearms,” Hymer said. “Firearms are the leading cause of death for children in the United States, and yet millions of children live in homes with firearms that are loaded and unlocked.”
The Alliance chose Clairemont as the inaugural location for its campaign because Clairemont is a family-oriented community where one in seven residents is 15 or younger. Clairemont is also presumed to have high gun ownership, based on its demographics and the fact that at least six gun stores are located in and near a community of 90,000.
Gun locks and safes are easy to obtain from gun shops and online, Hymer said, and many allow near-immediate access to the rightful owners but deny access to unauthorized users or thieves. Simply hiding guns in the home rarely works, she noted, as a large percentage of children admit to knowing their parents’ hiding places.
Hymer noted that most school shootings in America involve firearms that the shooters easily obtained from their own homes, or from the homes of friends or close relatives, as was the case in the shootings at the San Diego Islamic Center.
For many years, the San Diego Unified School District has been a statewide leader in notifying parents about their legal obligation to safely secure all guns on their property, whether in homes, garages or outbuildings.
School board trustee Shana Hazan and the Alliance’s Hymer will be available for media interviews at the billboard site from 9 a.m. to noon on Thursday, June 4.
News organizations that would like to interview Hazan and Hymer are invited to contact Someone’s Name at phone number or email address.
About the Alliance to End Gun Violence
The Alliance to End Gun Violence (formerly San Diegans for Gun Violence Prevention) was a sponsor of the City of San Diego’s Safe Storage Ordinance, which was approved in 2019, and has advocated for secure storage laws throughout the County and state since that time. The Alliance includes many San Diego County organizations and individual citizens who are united to end gun violence in America through advocacy and education. For more information about the Alliance go to AllianceToEndGunViolence.org
About San Diego and California’s Safe Storage of Firearms Ordinance
Both San Diego City and County law requires that a person who keeps any type of firearm in their residence or its accessory structures must keep it secured so that unauthorized users cannot access the weapon. The law requires that loaded and unloaded firearms be stored in a locked container or disabled with a trigger lock. There is an exception if the firearm is carried on the body of an authorized user, or is in the user’s immediate control so that they can readily retrieve and use the firearm. As of January 1, 2026, all gun owners in California must also securely store all firearms in their residence whenever the firearm is not being carried or readily controlled by the owner or a lawful authorized user.
About Secure Storage
When the RAND Corporation analyzed firearm laws around the country to determine their effectiveness, the study concluded that secure storage laws are the single most effective way to reduce firearm injuries, suicides, and deaths among children. Here’s a link: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/personal-firearm-storage.html
Keeping firearms and ammunition separate is even more effective.
Firearms are the leading cause of death for children in the United States, and yet 46 percent of firearm owners with children at home do not secure their firearms.
A study found that 40 percent of teens living in homes with guns report they have “easy access” to those guns, and 36 percent admit they’ve handled the weapons, including many children whose parents believe their children did not even know the location of the firearm. Among children 9 and under, 73 percent reported knowing the location of their parents’ firearms.
For children contemplating suicide, access to guns can make the difference between a cry for help and a certain death. Suicide attempts by firearm are fatal roughly 85 percent of the time. Suicide attempts by all other means are fatal less than 10 percent of the time.
Unsecured firearms are also more susceptible to theft, and stolen guns are more likely to be used in crimes. Each year hundreds of thousands of guns are stolen, and many are funneled into the underground market.
For more information on Secure Storage
San Diego’s Safe Storage of Firearms Ordinance
Everytown’s Secure Gun Storage page
Brady’s Safe Storage page
