Guns are being stolen from cars at triple the rate they were 10 years ago, a report finds

WASHINGTON — The number of guns stolen from cars in the U.S. has tripled in the past decade, making them the largest source of stolen guns in the country, according to an analysis of FBI data by the gun safety group Everytown.

The number of guns stolen from cars rose nearly every year and spiked during the coronavirus pandemic, along with a big increase in gun purchases in the U.S., according to the report, which analyzes FBI data from 337 cities in 44 states and was provided to The Associated Press on.

In some cases, the stolen weapons have turned up at crime scenes. In July 2021, a gun from an unlocked car in Riverside, Florida, was used to kill a 27-year-old Coast Guard member as she tried to stop a car burglary in her neighborhood.

The alarming trend underscores the need for Americans to safely secure their firearms to prevent them from ending up in the hands of dangerous people, said Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, whose agency has separately found links between stolen weapons and violent weapons. crimes.

“People don’t go to a mall and steal a gun from a locked car to go hunting. Those guns go straight out onto the street,” said Dettelbach, whose office was not involved in the report. “These are violent people who can’t pass a background check. They go to gangs. They’re going to go to drug dealers and they’re going to hurt and kill the people who live in the next city, the next county, the next state.”

Nearly 122,000 guns were stolen in 2022, and just over half of those came from cars — usually when they were parked in driveways or outside people’s homes, the Everytown report found. That’s an increase from about a quarter of all thefts in 2013, when homes were the top site for firearm thefts, the report said.

Stolen guns have also been linked to tragic accidents, such as when a 14-year-old boy in St. Petersburg, Florida, killed his 11-year-old brother after finding a gun stolen from an unlocked car in an alley. a few days before.

In 2022, the most recent year for which data was available, at least one firearm was stolen from a car every nine minutes on average. That’s almost certainly a substandard, however, since there is no federal law requiring people to report stolen guns and only a third of states require a report.

“Every gun stolen from a car increases the likelihood that it will be used in a violent crime,” said Sarah Burd-Sharp, senior research director at Everytown, which advocates for gun control policies. It’s unclear what’s driving the trend. The report shows that there are higher theft rates in states with looser gun laws, where gun ownership is also more common.

The report analyzed crime data from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, which provides details about what was stolen and where it came from. Guns stolen from cars are breaking trends in car theft in general: the number of other things stolen from cars has fallen 11% over the past decade, while gun thefts from cars have risen 200%, Everytown finds in its analysis of FBI data.

In Savannah, Georgia, city leaders last month passed an ordinance requiring people to secure firearms left in cars after seeing more than 200 guns stolen from unlocked cars in a year. The measure faces resistance from the state’s attorney general.

The ATF has said separately that theft is a major source of guns ending up in the hands of criminals. More than 1 million guns were reported stolen between 2017 and 2021, according to a comprehensive report on crime guns released last year. And the vast majority of gun thefts come from individuals.

The agency is prohibited by law from disclosing detailed information about where stolen weapons end up. However, the information can be shared with the police investigating a crime.