Stolen gun numbers

This is interesting (from here):

The DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that an average of 232,400 firearms are stolen each year, based on data from 2005 through 2010. Eighty percent are never recovered

And how many “gun crimes” are there each year? In 2013 for robbery (125,366), aggravated assault (146,045), and murder (8,438) these add up to 279,849.

If, on average, each gun was used in only two crimes before being disposed of the criminal market could easily supply those needs from the guns never recovered.

Does anyone really think the criminal who steals a gun is going to do a background check on anyone before they use it in violent crime or sells it to someone who uses it in the commission of a violent crime?

“Universal” background checks of gun sales are for people who believe in Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, and The Tooth Fairy. The resources spent on such foolishness should be used on something that has a chance of working..

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13 thoughts on “Stolen gun numbers

  1. I lost a Ruger 10/22, Savage .270 bolt action, and Rem 870 12 gauge to burglars.

    Three years later, the bolt action was found in the woods behind my house, rusted to hell and gone.

    The other two were never recovered, so 66.7% criminal use or resale.

    It feels good to be better than average….

  2. The Oregon law has no money attached for enforcement, and 11 Sheriffs have indicated they will not enforce it.

    The law was designed to fail, like Obamacare, so the gun-grabbers can come back with the next Control, which will be a FOID system (registration of all firearms).

    • And that works SO well in Illinois. Chicago is number one on everyone’s list of liveable cities for its vibrant nightlife.

      I understand DARPA is working on a Sarcasm font.

  3. “…something that has a chance of working..”

    We’d have to define “working” wouldn’t we, and that brings up the whole discussion of motivations and goals.

    If the motivation were a love of liberty, human freedom and justice, and the goal was maximum protection of property rights, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

    On the other hand, if the motivation is a disdain for liberty, and the goal is government control and direction of society (wholesale coercion) then the rights of the individual must be opposed and the relative power of government over the individual increased.

    The way to oppose the rights and liberty of the individual is to have coercive power over him. Coercive powder comes in many forms, and those include intimidation, shame, fear, frustration, government access to communications and to bank accounts and so on, but when push comes to shove, those who love coercion as a tool of government will need fire superiority over the individual citizen. Thus anything and everything that can help to reduce the armaments of the individual must be done. Anyone who opposes the process must, of course, be put down.

    That’s all. Is that easy enough to understand, or must I reiterate? I can say it a thousand different ways (and probably have).

    Some people are put off by the naked truth, of course. They do very much however NEED to be put off. A heavy sleeper must be shaken out of his slumber.

    • In this context what I think of as having a chance of working is quickly capturing and punishing those who violate the rights of others.

  4. I’d be curious to know what percentage of those stolen guns come from police. I suspect that, if we looked at the percentage of American guns in the hands of police, we’d find that a police gun is more likely to be stolen than that of an ordinary citizen.

    It’s just a suspicion on my part, mind you. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

  5. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to help counter the gun banners’ arguments. If there were no guns in civilian hands, there would be few guns stolen, so few stolen guns in the hands of criminals. Or so the story goes.

  6. Paul, you could think of it this way: The more guns that are out there, the smaller the percentage of guns are being stolen. Then, compare the % of guns stolen vs % of something else, like cars or motorcycles. For example, the FBI reports there were an estimated 699,594 motor vehicle thefts nationwide in 2013. Cars have locks and keyed ignitions. There are 254 million cars registered in the US, and an untold number of others.

    Still, that 254 thousand number sounds high to me. Cars are parked in public, but guns are generally inside homes, and hopefully locked away or hidden.

    • True. But I wasn’t arguing my view, I was saying how those numbers will be abused by the enemy as an argument in favor of their position.

  7. Overload in CO: so, to use your numbers, we have more guns than cars in the United States… but more people in the United States are killed in car accidents than by guns. Interesting. And more than twice as many cars are stolen each year than guns — or, by percentage, a specific car is almost four times as likely to be stolen as a specific gun.

    This could make for an interesting narrative, couldn’t it? Cars are statistically more deadly in the United States than guns, even though we have more guns than cars… and cars are a lot more likely to get stolen.

    Clearly we need to limit cars. No more that 10-gallon gas tanks in Massachusetts and California (7 gallons in New York). No more ‘automatic’ cars. We should identify the makes and models most often involved in deadly car accidents, label them “assault vehicles”, and ban them — except for police, of course.

  8. By the standard media definition, aren’t all those thefts already “gun crimes”, because a gun was involved?

    • You’d think so, but reasoning from A to B, never mind C, is not their long suit.

  9. Pingback: SayUncle » Stolen gun numbers

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