Monday, September 17, 2012

Houston's Stolen Guns

The Houston Chronicle reports

Cabdrivers Mohammed Elsayed and Blaise Nwokenaka, shot dead by the last passengers of their lives, were killed with a .380-caliber Cobra pistol - a gun stolen just 20 days earlier.

Nineteen-year-old Shanetria Grogan was slain by her ex-boyfriend, shot in the head with a .380-caliber Jimenez Arms semi-automatic pistol, also stolen. And 23-year-old Leroy Pierson, killed in a drug deal gone bad, suffered a fatal wound from a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol, yet one more ripped-off weapon.

At least 32,000 guns, some 4,000 every year, have been stolen from Houston-area homes, cars, pawn shops and even gun dealers since 2005, with only 7 percent of them ever recovered, a Houston Chronicle analysis shows.
And this is only Houston, and what we know about. Can you imagine the extent of the problem nation-wide?

The solution is obvious.   Safe storage laws plus a reporting of stolen guns requirement would take care of the rest.

This wouldn't be a 100% solution, nothing is, but it would go a long way towards improving things.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

17 comments:

  1. Like everything else, I think that education will always go much further than legislation to solve these types of issues.

    I personally would be supportive of the reporting requirement IF (and it is a big if) it could be crafted in such a way as to prevent over-zealous anti-gun prosecutors from using it as a punitive catch all tool to use against otherwise lawful citizens.

    But without careful wording, I think the end result would be what we see with so many "well-intentioned' gun control laws and that is the unintended consequences of the law become nearly as troublesome to liberty as the problem that were intended to 'solve'.

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    1. Exactly so. As with many other crimes, there are some who insist on blaming the victim, the society, and so forth--everyone but the criminal.

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  2. The solution is obvious - outlaw theft of firearms. Since it will be against the law to steal a gun, we will no longer have to worry about stolen guns being used in a crime.

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    1. As an added layer of protection, you could outlaw the use of a stolen gun for criminal purposes. That way, in case a few guns are stolen - not sure how since it would be illegal - then you definitely would not have to worry about them being used to commit a crime since this would be illegal.

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  3. Any evidence that legitimate theft victims are not reporting their loss to police? You are not even being consistent with your movement. "Lost and stolen" laws are supposedly aimed at straw purchasers, not theft victims.

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    1. What? Would you mind explaining that?

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    2. No, the issue TS is that because there is no penalty for not reporting a stolen weapon, straw purchasers can claim a gun was stolen and if the state cannot prove otherwise, they have no recourse to prosecute.

      So the solution is obvious ... come with a law that will criminalize the victim of a robbery so that an actual criminal, the straw purchaser, can no longer use that as a excuse. ???

      I know, crazy right? Although, like I said, with extremely careful wording, I could find myself supporting such a measure. But it would be a tremendous feat.

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    3. It's the joke that shows up from time to time over at The Truth About Guns: I had a gun collection, but it was lost in an unfortunate boating accident.

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    4. Sure, Mike. When your side talks about “lost and stolen” reporting, they are complaining that straw purchasers are getting away with their crimes because they lie to police and claim the gun was stolen when a crime gun gets traced back to them. They are proposing making it a crime to not report a lost or stolen gun within 72 hours (or some other time frame)- apparently because they think police are too bumbling to catch a criminal in a lie or be able to prove that a crime (straw purchase) was committed, so they want to add a new crime to charge them for. Never mind that the same straw purchaser can still say “it was stolen…yesterday” when the police come knocking and we are in the exact same predicament.

      What I have not seen is anyone on your side claiming that lawful gun owners are legitimately having their guns stolen, and for some reason not reporting it to the police- because they are ok with not getting their property back if it gets recovered at a crime scene, and they are cool with being suspecting of a major crime/murder. Is that what you think is going on? Any evidence to support this?

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    5. The straw purchaser who reports a gun stolen to the cops can get away with that only once or twice before it becomes obvious they're running a scam. They rely on no licensing and no registration. I've provided the solution.

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    6. Mikeb, you've provided a solution in search of a problem. Your solution has the side-effect of making confiscation much easier. Thanks for playing, but you lose.

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    7. MikeB: “The straw purchaser who reports a gun stolen to the cops can get away with that only once or twice before it becomes obvious they're running a scam.”

      How is any different with or without a “lost or stolen” law? Your people claim straw purchasers get away with it because this law is not in place. You just said yourself it is obvious they are running a scam.

      MikeB: “They rely on no licensing and no registration. I've provided the solution.”

      No they don’t. We are talking about the situation where the gun is traced back to the purchaser. The police already know who the buyer was. Again, how does this law help anything?

      And again, what does this law have to do with preventing legitimate thefts, which is how we started this conversation?

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    8. "Mikeb, you've provided a solution in search of a problem."

      All those stolen guns do not represent a problem?

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    9. Stolen guns are a problem, but you have no solution that will solve that. Licensing and registration is an answer to another question entirely.

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    10. No, licensing and registration combined with safe storage and reporting stolen guns laws would make you gun owners about 1,000 times more proficient at thwarting theft. You can't seem to act responsibly on your own, so you need to be constrained by the government.

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    11. What I do with my property on my property is my business. If someone breaks in to steal my televsion, are you going to argue that I deserve to be punished for not having put it in a safe? You treat guns as different from other forms of property, but that's wrong. Punish the thief, not the owner.

      Safe storage laws are one thing. You at least have some justification in calling for those. I see it as wrong-headed, since it only pushes our society more and more toward blaming the victim rather than the purpetrator, but that's a separate argument.

      Licensing and registration, though, are in a different class of infringement. You say that you want those so you can punish the owner if a gun gets misused, but we know that they have a much more dangerous purpose--to give the government a list of guns and gun owners. Can't you see how calling for licensing and registration weakens your case? You expose yourself to the interpretation that you want guns removed from law-abiding citizens, and you gain nothing.

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    12. A television comparison, now? You really are losing the argument, man.

      Guns are different in that they are weapons. They are treated differently, even by your side. You claim special rights to own them but when we want special regulations to keep them safely away from kids and thieves, you start saying they're just like all other property.

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