Hammond Indiana Gun Shop Burgled - Owner Feels Bad

The Hammond News reports on the incredibly fast recovery the owners of the Hammond Gun Shop made after a traumatic break-in. Just one day later, Deb Gales, the owner of the family owned business is open for business.

Burglars forced their way into the store about 4 a.m. Thursday in the 6800 block of Kennedy Avenue and stole 28 handguns. Officials at first believed 33 guns were stolen.

"They took out the whole front door," Gales said. "They smashed all our cases."

David Coulson, a senior special agent and ATF public information officer, said the federal agency has seen many stolen guns over the years end up in the hands of gang members and drug traffickers.

"It breaks my heart to know there are guns on the street that came from my store," said Gales, who has owned the business since 1993. "I've never had that before in all these years."

It seems on one, not the police, not the ATF, and certainly not Debbie herself, have any concept of shared responsibility. Whenever guns are stolen, the focus needs to be placed on the "victim" of the theft. The thieves are already gone, the horse is already out of the barn, so to speak, what needs to be determined is how responsible were the precautions taken to prevent the theft and how properly were the guns stored.

Guns stored in a glass display cases during the night are not responsibly secured. Jewelry stores and banks don't leave their valuable property in easily accessible places, neither should gun shops.

Video surveillance and other alarm systems need to be state-of-the-art. No one should be able to approach the front door of a gun shop at 4:00 a.m. without being immediately detected and captured on video.

But for all these mistakes and omissions all we get is that it breaks the heart of the owner, not enough to miss a day's business, mind you, and certainly not enough to invest in the proper and responsible measures to ensure no repeat performance, but she felt really badly.  I guess that's something.

What's your opinion?

Proper Security for Gun Shops

The Los Angeles Times reports

The blue-and-white 1984 Chevrolet van, reported stolen Saturday evening from Bellflower, was used as a battering ram for would-be thieves to break into the store in an attempt to steal firearms and ammunition, investigators said. But detectives said the store owners were aware of the potential for such a theft and had taken extraordinary security measures to protect their store and merchandise. Bars and protective casings kept the burglars from accessing the firearms, authorities said.

In a case like this we applaud the store owner for having taken "extraordinary security measures." In the other cases, then, isn't it fair to blame the store owner for not having done so?

My opinion is precautions like reinforced security bars or huge vaults to put the merchandise in at night should not be optional. These should be the minimum requirement.  But, as usual the gun crowd doesn't want to be constrained to do anything, that would be an infringement.  The result is only a tiny percentage are truly responsible. I'm glad to report on one of those today.

The idea of shared responisbility in cases like this is simple. If you make the theft of a gun easy, you share in the responsibility for that theft and its consequences.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.