WASHINGTON — The rate of weapons taken from automobiles in the U.S. has tripled over the last years, making them the biggest source of taken weapons in the nation, an analysis of FBI information by the weapon security group Everytown discovered.
The rate of taken weapons from automobiles climbedup almost every year and surged throughout the coronavirus pandemic along with a significant rise in weapons purchases in the U.S., according to the report, which examines FBI information from 337 cities in 44 states and was offered to The Associated Press.
The taken weapons have, in some cases, turned up at criminalactivity scenes. In July 2021, a weapon taken from an opened carsandtruck in Riverside, Florida, was utilized to kill a 27-year-old Coast Guard member as she attempted to stop a carsandtruck theft in her community.
The disconcerting pattern highlights the requirement for Americans to securely protected their guns to avoid them from getting into the hands of unsafe individuals, stated Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steve Dettelbach, whose firm has independently discovered links inbetween taken weapons and violent criminalactivities.
“People puton’t go to a shoppingcenter and take a gun from a locked automobile to go searching. Those weapons are going straight to the street,” stated Dettelbach, whose company was not included in the report. “They’re going to violent individuals who can’t pass a background check. They’re going to gangs. They’re going to drug dealerships, and they’re going to hurt and kill the individuals who live in the next town, the next county or the next state.”
Nearly 112,000 weapons were r