Thursday, November 15, 2012

Texas Gun Owner Leaves Gun in the Pickup - It's Stolen


Local news reports
A New Braunfels man reported to police that someone stole his handgun from his pickup truck while it was parked at a local restaurant last week, a police spokesman said.

Also stolen, along with his .357-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun, were his 25-year-old spurs, said Capt. John McDonald of New Braunfels Police Department. The victim valued the gun at $400 and the spurs at $500.
Gun-rights fanatics will never admit that failure to safely store a gun which is then stolen is wrong.  They will do everything to resist accepting this responsibility. They blame the thief, of course, which no one could deny, but they do it to the exclusion of all else.  The fact is, leaving a gun in a vehicle is not safe and responsible behavior.

The other trick they have is to blame the law which says guns aren't allowed in the restaurant or the post office or wherever the gun owner happened to be going when he decided to leave the gun in the car. If it weren't for that silly law, they cry, he wouldn't have been forced to do it. Of course, failing to hold the gun owner accountable, they conveniently forget that he had choices.  He could simply not go to that place which prohibits guns, or, and here's a real shocker, he could leave the gun at home in the safe. That's assuming he owns a gun safe, which most of these cavalier, irresponsible gun owners do not.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

15 comments:

  1. So lets see, I work at a university about 30 miles from my home. The law says that once I cross the magical boundary of the school buildings, I am suddenly too dangerous to bring my gun into magical unicorn land.

    You are saying that because of this and in order to be "responsible"; I should leave my gun at home and be disarmed for the 60 miles of my drive, while eating off campus for lunch, and for the many honey-do stops I must make on the the way home? Seriously?

    Further, while I do lock my gun up in a mini-vault secured with a metal cable - that is not foolproof. So if someone were to break into my car, cut the cable and steal the vault and loaded gun - you would still put the blame on me?

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    1. Yes, in the car is not safe. But, leaving your gun at home is, even for you. The danger is only in your mind.

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    2. Not voting and not expressing your opinions in public is safe, even for you. See how easy that is? Rights are rights.

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  2. 1. Public businesses and institutions have no more right to ban legal gun carry than to ban someone from wearing a yarmulke or a button supporting Obama. The passive exercise of our rights in no way harms others. If the person starts shouting slogans or waving a gun around, that's a different matter.

    2. Leave the gun at home? Now that's just crazy talk. My rights don't end at my property line. The man in question may not have a carry license. Texas allows carry in vehicles without one. He shouldn't have to have a license, so making Texas a Constitutional carry state would help.

    3. The only person responsible for the theft is the thief. The owner has a right to leave his keys in the ignition if he chooses. It's his property. Depending on where he parked, doing so might be ill-advised, but the fault lies solely with the thief.

    Saying that this man is to blame for his gun being stolen is like saying that a woman who wears a short skirt is to blame if she gets raped. The victim in either case is not responsible.

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    1. I don't say he's responsible for the gun being stolen, I say he's responsible for not having secured it properly. The theft was a side effect of his criminal lack of safe storage.

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    2. A person's property is his property. You could make the same argument about the radio in the truck or about the truck itself. Any time you blame the victim, you justify the criminal. As a practical matter, locking the truck makes sense, as does not visiting crime-infested areas, but the crime is the sole responsibility of the criminal. Again, do you blame rape victims for being raped? The same logic that you use applies to them. If only they'd keep their tempting bodies away from bad men, nothing would happen.

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  3. So what’s your solution, Mike? Arrest the guy when he reports his stolen gun? Yep, that’ll help the police solve crimes…

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  4. I would think that even in a state with whacked-out gun laws such as Texas, it wouldn't be legal to carry a handgun in a vehicle unless it was unloaded, disassembled, disabled or at the very least in the trunk.

    What kind of idiot would even report a stolen gun from his car? That's like going to the police when somebody steals your dope? Only in America!

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    1. What the hell good is a disassembled gun? Texas law is as I said above--no license required if the gun is left in the vehicle. It would be better if no license were required period, but we're working on that.

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    2. Flying Junior: “What kind of idiot would even report a stolen gun from his car?”

      Exactly my point, Flying Junior. Mike would have people who report the theft arrested.

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    3. My mistake. It started me wondering how, if I bought a gun, I might get it home. Presumably not in a station wagon! You sure as hell can't drive around with a gun in your car in California, I guess unless it's a rifle. Governor Brown is cracking down! Most of the guys that carry in their cars are under the radar. No reason for cops to suspect them or pull them over.

      When I visited my cousin in Corpus Christi a few years back, it was still legal to have an open beer in your car. You just couldn't be drunk while you were driving. He had hunting rifles, but no handguns at the time.

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    4. Actually, as long as the gun is locked up and separate from the ammunition, you are allowed to have a gun in your car. Even someone who's visiting from out of state is fine. In that respect, California is better than New York or Massachusetts.

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    5. Comprehensive gun control laws, like I've suggested would discourage law-abiding gun owners from doing stupid things with their guns like leaving them in the car. Being licensed and having registered all their guns with the government, they would be held responsible for them. If lost or stolen they would have to report them or face the consequences next time the registration was due for renewal. This kind of gun control would constrain people to be responsible and accountable, something you guys are not doing now. Theft would be tremendously diminished. Straw purchasing would be eliminated. And the inconvenience to gun owners would be minimal.

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    6. California police haven’t even caught up to known prohibited persons who have registered guns on file with the DOJ (you posed about this recently, Mike). But you think the police have the time and resources to inspect every single gun in the whole country every year?

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  5. Mikeb, I remind you again, there are 300,000,000+ guns in this country, most without much paperwork and many that have moved on from their original owners. Your laws wouldn't affect those guns. What they would do is create a major infringement on law-abiding gun owners and create a vast black market.

    You've never answered this.

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