North Carolina's Child Fatality Task Force is urging state lawmakers to make changes next year to reduce the rate of child gun deaths in the state.

Firearms are the top cause of death by injury for children in this state, topping traffic accidents since 2020. The state ranks 12th in the country for young lives lost to guns, well above the national average.

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One of the changes they're seeking is in how adults are held responsible when children get access to their guns and hurt or kill someone.

Under current law, only a gun owner who lives in a household with a child can be held responsible for not securing their weapon.

That doesn't cover situations like the death of Jenesis Dockery, the 8-year-old who was shot and killed in 2023 at her babysitter's home in Cumberland County.

In that case, the babysitter's son, also a minor child, got the gun from his grandfather's home and brought it back home with him. No adult was ever held responsible for failure to safely store the weapon.

The state Child Fatality Task Force voted Wednesday to recommend removing the residency requirement from that law, which would make all gun owners responsible for storing guns securely.

Child Fatality Task Force member Scott Proescholdbell said it would strengthen the 1993 law.

"This was brought up by law enforcement agencies and partners of the task force past few months," he told the panel.

The task force also voted to recommend that lawmakers supply $2.1 million in annual funding for the state's safe gun storage awareness campaign, known as NC SAFE.

State lawmakers mandated the campaign, but never approved funding for it. It's been running on federal funds for the past couple of years.

State Juvenile Justice chief William Lassiter said the campaign is currently highlighting the issue of guns in vehicles.

"We did a study in the state of North Carolina last year. 60% of the guns that were stolen were stolen from vehicles," Lassiter said. "The majority of them were not locked up. The vehicle wasn't locked up, and the gun was not locked up inside the vehicle."

Still, Lassiter said, four out of five kids charged in 2023 for bringing guns onto school campuses got those guns from home. That's why NC SAFE is working with the Department of Public Instruction to raise parents' awareness of safe storage.

"Thirty percent of high school students in this state say they can get a gun within one hour that's fully loaded and ready to use without their parents' permission," Lassiter said, citing a recent survey that looked at youth risk behavior."We've got to change those numbers."

Lassiter said the NC SAFE campaign has given away 60,000 free gun locks to date.

People can learn more about the fight for safe gun storage in the WRAL documentary, "UnSafe: North Carolina kids dying from gun violence."