The parents of a toddler who fatally shot himself in Barre say the handgun's manufacturer, Glock, is marketing weapons that lack key safety mechanisms in ways that make such accidental deaths "entirely foreseeable."

Greg and Evelyn Bunce of Saco, Maine, filed a lawsuit against the company last month, alleging that Glock is liable for the death of their 3-year-old son, Peter.

Greg and two of his children were in Vermont visiting Greg's brother and girlfriend in June 2021 when Peter found a loaded Glock 26 semiautomatic in a bedside table drawer. Greg was in a bathroom when he heard the shot that killed his child. "Peter was only out of sight for a matter of seconds," says the civil complaint, which was filed in federal court in Vermont.

The gun belonged to the girlfriend, Rebecca Post, who was out shopping at the time, according to court papers. The family was staying at her home in Barre Town. The Bunce family has separately sued Post and the insurance company she operated out of her home for negligence; Post, who declined comment through her attorney, and the company have denied the claims.

Peter's death helped inspire Vermont's new safe storage law, which took effect this month. It created a criminal offense for gun owners whose unsecured weapons are misused.

The Bunces' lawsuit against Glock is the latest uphill attempt by victims to hold gunmakers responsible for how their weapons are used. Their case also highlights an aspect of American gun culture that Glock has helped entrench: The most popular guns sold for personal protection are those that don't include a manual safety, such as a switch or other features that could make them difficult for young children to shoot.

"Peter Bunce's tragic death was entirely preventable," his parents said in a statement through their attorney. "Glock knows the danger posed by its lack of a manual safety, and that children are especially drawn to firearms."

Accidental shootings account for a small portion of youth-related gun deaths in America, but hundreds are wounded or killed this way each year — at least 220 so far in 2023, according to a database kept by Everytown for Gun Safety. The gun-control group tracks incidents reported in the news, such as the pregnant Ohio mother who was fatally shot by her 2-year-old, and the 2-year-old in Louisiana who shot and wounded himself at home. Both happened on the same day in June.

At least two Vermont children have died and 10 have been injured in accidental shootings since 2008, according to state Department of Health data. Peter Bunce is not included in those figures because he was not a Vermont resident.

His fatal accident was, in many ways, typical. The vast majority of shootings among children age 4 or younger take place at their home or a relative's, according to a study of available federal data published last month in Injury Epidemiology, an online journal. Most are young boys who get their hands on a loaded firearm. And almost all of those firearms are semiautomatic handguns.

The Glock 26 that 3-year-old Peter Bunce found is a small, 9-millimeter model designed for concealed carry. Introduced in 1995, the gun became known as a "Baby Glock" or "Pocket Rocket," which the company specifically marketed as a "perfect choice for women," the journalist Paul M. Barrett reported in his 2012 book, Glock: The Rise of America's Gun.

The Baby Glock, like other Glock models, didn't come with a manual safety feature that was common to other brands' pistols in the '90s. When turned on, these safety switches prevent a weapon from firing. So a toddler — or anyone else — would need to disable the safety in order to shoot.

Instead, Glock guns integrate the safety mechanism into the trigger itself. The company's "Safe Action" system prevents the gun from discharging if it's dropped to the ground, but it also means that a loaded Glock will fire whenever the trigger is pulled. And Glock triggers are easy to pull, with a low resistance and short distance of travel.

Those features were controversial when introduced, but they've helped make Glock guns extremely popular. Their quickness and accuracy appealed to law enforcement, which in turn made them desirable to people interested in self-defense.

By the early 1990s, Glock faced numerous lawsuits related to accidental discharges and settled most of them out of court, Barrett reported in his book. Federal legislation passed in 2005 made gunmakers immune to many civil lawsuits, though Glock later settled with a Los Angeles police officer whose 3-year-old shot him in the back with his service weapon, paralyzing him.

The Bunces make claims that are similar to the officer's argument. Glock's weapons, their complaint states, allow even a 3-year-old "with small, weak hands and no idea how to operate a firearm" to shoot. Glock designs its pistols this way "simply to gain a competitive edge in market share," the lawsuit states.

Glock's product literature tells owners to keep their guns locked away and unloaded because children are attracted to the weapons and can fire them. But the Bunces allege that the warning is deceptive because Glock also promotes the idea that quick access to a firearm is a valuable means of self-protection.

"If Glock believes the milliseconds needed to disengage a manual safety is not acceptable, then Glock knows its end users will not store these weapons locked up and unloaded," their complaint states.

Glock did not respond to a request for comment. The company has not yet filed a response to the Bunces' suit.

A manual safety device could "absolutely" help prevent gun deaths among children, said Greg Lickenbrock, senior firearms analyst for Everytown for Gun Safety.

"Anything that can either disable the gun or slow it down from being used is, to me, extremely beneficial," he said.

The notion isn't new; a 1991 federal report found that childproof safety devices on handguns could effectively prevent accidental deaths among children age 5 or younger. Yet handguns without manual safeties have become ubiquitous, and consumers who visit gun shops aren't likely to be pushed toward one, Lickenbrock said.

Seven Days asked Parro's Gun Shop in Waterbury, Vermont's largest showroom, for a tutorial on Glock's guns and to discuss what handgun safety features gun buyers should consider when purchasing one for self-defense or home protection. Owner Henry Parro demurred, citing concern that doing so might violate his sales distribution contracts with the company.

No one knows how many shootings by young children could have been avoided if the guns they found were equipped with manual safeties or other childproof mechanisms. The question has received little study — the result of poor data collection and federal restrictions on firearms research.

Seven Days could not locate any empirical analysis of the handgun models involved in such accidents. Nor is the data easy to compile. Police in Lake Placid, N.Y., told Seven Days they could not release information about a 2015 incident in which a mother was shot by her toddler because the case was sealed. The San Diego County Sheriff's Department declined to provide the make or model of the gun that a 3-year-old used to kill a 1-year-old sibling on July 17.

One of the researchers who conducted the recent study of youth gun fatalities, Nichole Michaels, wrote in an email that gaps in federal data prevented a deeper analysis. As a 2021 paper in the Loyola Consumer Law Review by a different author put it: "Basic research on the efficacy of gun safety measures, no matter how logical, has been virtually impossible."

Firearms are exempted from the Consumer Product Safety Act, the Loyola Consumer Law Review paper noted, and only Massachusetts requires that handguns sold by licensed dealers have a safety mechanism or trigger resistance that "effectively precludes an average five year old from operating the handgun when it is ready to fire."

Vermont's new Act 45 includes measures intended primarily to prevent suicide, including a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases. The law, which went into effect on July 1, creates the criminal offense of negligent firearms storage, which means a gun owner can face up to five years in prison if a child or another person prohibited from having a gun uses it to injure another person.

Then-Washington County state's attorney Rory Thibault did not file charges against Post following Peter Bunce's death, explaining in an August 2021 memo to police that it was not illegal to keep a gun loaded and unlocked at home. He also suggested the death may have been avoidable and noted the gun's lack of a manual safety. "Unfortunately, any lessons learned in this matter are too late," Thibault concluded.

Rep. Alyssa Black (D-Essex), Act 45's primary sponsor, said Peter Bunce's death weighed on her as she developed the legislation. Her 23-year-old son purchased a handgun in 2018 and used it to end his own life hours later. Black said she hoped that the safe-storage component could help prevent accidental deaths, too.

"They were always, always on my mind," she said of the Bunce family. "I mean, they lost their child. They lost their 3-year-old child. I can't even imagine that."

But even Black wasn't familiar with the questions around handgun safety features that the Bunces' latest lawsuit raised.

"We brought in testimony from several national researchers on gun violence," Black said. "And in all those discussions," she said, the issue "was never mentioned."

Full Bunce family statement

"Peter Bunce's tragic death was entirely preventable. Glock should have designed a handgun for civilians with a manual safety that would be impossible for a three-year-old boy to maneuver. Glock knows the danger posed by its lack of a manual safety, and that children are especially drawn to firearms. The Bunce family hopes to hold Glock accountable for selling civilian handguns with no external safety, despite decades of industry experience learning about these dangers. The Bunce family remains devastated by the loss of Peter and their lives have been changed forever. Although the lawsuit they filed in Vermont is a public matter, the Bunce family requests that their privacy be respected at this time."