Stolen Firearm Resurfaces During Traffic Stop 12 Years Later

One thing we often talk about when discussing guns used in crime, particularly when people want to make a thing about gun stores that sold a number of firearms used in criminal acts, is something called “time to crime.” What that means is how long between the gun being sold and it being used in a crime.

Usually, you’re looking at years. That stands to reason since most of those guns are stolen in the first place. People buy guns lawfully, keep them for a while, then see them stolen during a burglary, only for them to be found on a criminal or at a crime scene much later.

Earlier today, I came across a news story that kind of perfectly encapsulates this concept.

A Santa Rosa police officer who stopped a vehicle for having a light out early Saturday stumbled on a pair of loaded guns, including one stolen from Livermore a dozen years ago.

…

The 20-year-old man was found with a .40 caliber Springfield XD-40 semi-automatic handgun. It had been reported stolen in Livermore in 2013, police said. The passenger, also male, was reportedly carrying an unregistered, privately made 9mm P80 firearm.

So roughly 12 years later, the firearm turns up in the hands of someone who was probably way too young to have stolen it at the time.

Now, the gun store this was initially purchased at is the source of a so-called crime gun that was traced. This would, to people who don’t know any better, look like the store sold the gun to a criminal, either intentionally or without really paying close enough attention to the clues that this was going to be used for nefarious purposes.

But what really happened is that someone bought a gun lawfully, then had it stolen. They reported it to police, along with the serial number, and a dozen years later, it turned up.

Here’s the thing to remember, though. The only ways this could be considered an anomaly is that the serial numbers were reported to police when the gun was stolen, the fact that it was recovered quite this long after it was taken, or that it was reported. It’s possible to be a combination of two or more of these options, too, admittedly.

Most guns in criminal hands are stolen. We know this definitively.

So when someone tries to push an agenda by saying your local gun store is selling tons of firearms that end up in criminal hands, understand that they’re not telling you how long after they were sold did the turn up, who bought them originally, or anything else that might suggest that the dealer in question did nothing wrong, but is being unfairly demonized.

Anti-gunners don’t like gun stores. They can’t shut them all down, but they’ll do everything they can to try and destroy the gun trade. You don’t need gun control when there’s nowhere to buy a gun, after all.

Don’t let them get away with that kind of nonsense.

Stolen guns turn up in strange places. Criminals don’t buy new guns, and anti-gunners wouldn’t understand anything about the firearm industry or gun culture if it jumped up on the face and danced the Macarena.