GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Police in Grand Rapids say a safe storage investigation is underway after a 15-year-old shot and injured himself Tuesday morning, apparently accidentally.

It happened around 7:40 a.m. on the 1300 block of Sherman Street SE, near Benjamin Avenue SE.

Grand Rapids Police Department Chief Eric Winstrom told News 8 that the teenager was shot in the shoulder. The chief called the situation “near-tragic.”

“Any slight bit of difference in the direction that the bullet traveled, and we could’ve been having a very different, very sad, tragic conversation,” Winstrom said. “…Fortunately, this child’s going to make a full recovery.”

Michigan’s safe storage law took effect in February, requiring gun owners to keep firearms in a locked storage box or container when it is “reasonably known that a minor is or is likely to be present on the premises.”

“It’s the law, you know. Almost a year now, it’s been required that gun owners safely secure with either a gun lock or a safe,” Winstrom said. “It’s difficult to overstate how important it is for our gun owners in the city to secure these firearms from the kids.”

Winstrom said that authorities would “follow through in this case, as we have done in the past, with criminal charges if they’re appropriate.”

A few weeks ago, on Oct. 26, a 2-year-old got hold of a gun at a Grand Rapids home and shot himself in the hand. The toddler’s father was charged with a safe storage violation and is expected back in court later this week for a hearing.

“If you’re going to have a gun in the home, you have to be a grown-up about it. You have to be a responsible adult about it,” Winstrom said.

GRPD offers free gun locks at its downtown headquarters at 1 Monroe Center. Many neighborhood associations also provide them, the chief said. You can click here to find a gun lock program near you.

“The city is doing everything we can to make it easy to comply with the law, and it just takes the intentionality of adults in the city to follow the law and secure it. It’s been the right thing to do well before it was against the law to allow this to happen. Prior to this being the law, we had incidents where people were shot and we charged different crimes, child abuse and things like that,” the chief said. “So it’s nice that we have a law directly on point that we can charge now, but unfortunately, it takes incidents like this to really get the information out there to advertise not only the law, but this is the right thing to do.”