Data posted by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows more than 17,200 firearms were reported lost or stolen from federally licensed firearms dealers in 2024, which at least partly explains how criminals invariably seem to manage getting their hands on a gun, while also demonstrating that restrictrive gun laws don’t work.
Minnesota posted a startling 4,847 missing/stolen firearms, and according to Ashlee Sherrill, a public information officer with the ATF in St. Paul, the problem may be with a single retailer, although she could not elaborate.
Following Minnesota in the “Top Ten” for lost or stolen firearms from FFLs are Texas (984), North Carolina (661), Florida (637), California (631), Tennessee (586), Pennsylvania (568), New York (473), Indiana (453) and Georgia (405).
Regardless of how the numbers break down, it amounts to a lot of hardware making its way into the criminal element, and the downside is that law-abiding gun owners often wind up being penalized for crimes they didn’t commit. Anti-gunners gleefully use such crimes to complain about “careless gun dealers,” when nothing is further from the truth. Gun thieves are known to crash their way into gun stores. Such thefts are nothing new, and have been illustrated time after time by security videos such as this one, released in June 2024 by the Murfreesboro, Tennessee Police Department:
As noted at the ATF website, “Federal firearms licensees (FFLs) must report to ATF each missing, lost, or stolen firearm from the FFL’s inventory or collection within 48 hours of discovery of the loss or theft by completing and forwarding a Federal Firearms Licensee Theft/Loss Report (ATF Form 3310.11). In addition, the FFL must also report the firearm theft or loss to the appropriate local law enforcement agency.”
One case which underscores the necessity for retailers to keep a sharp eye on their inventory is that of the infamous “D.C. Sniper” attacks, also known as the “Beltway Sniper” case in September and October 2002. As noted at Wikipedia, over the course of 10 months, the murderous team of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo are known to have murdered 17 people and wounded 10 others, and when they were apprehended in Maryland, the rifle they used was found to have been stolen from a popular gun store in Tacoma, Washington, some 2,800 miles away. The store apparently didn’t realize the gun had been essentially shoplifted until the Maryland arrest. Muhammad was eventually executed by lethal injection and Malvo is serving multiple life sentences in Virginia.
Like it or not, more guns are stolen from private citizens than firearms retailers, according to data from an unlikely source: Everytown for Gun Safety, the Michael Bloomberg-backed gun control group. According to an Everytown report from last year, “Research from Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund finds that in cities that report data to the FBI, gun thefts from cars are the largest source of stolen guns.”
Back in 2022, the National Rifle Association posted a short advisory regarding how to store firearms in vehicles, which sometimes cannot be avoided because of various policies prohibiting concealed carry in certain businesses or public buildings. Ideally, such places can be avoided, but that’s not always possible.
The Everytown report asserted, “Everytown analyzed crime data from 337 small- to large-size cities across 44 states—covering roughly 63 million people—obtained from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Analyses revealed that in 2022, nearly 112,000 guns were reported stolen in these cities. This is likely a conservative estimate since only a third of US states legally require reporting of lost and stolen guns to law enforcement, and thus thousands of missing guns go unreported annually. While guns can be stolen in a variety of ways and places (e.g., from people’s houses or from gun shops, or individuals directly), in 2022, just over half (51 percent) were stolen from cars. This amounted to nearly 62,000 guns stolen from cars in 2022 across these 337 cities.”
A May 2024 report appearing in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press asserted, “The rate of guns stolen from cars in the U.S. has tripled over the last decade, making them the largest source of stolen guns in the country.” It is important to note this report relied on the Everytown analysis, which became the source for such stories, and was circulated by the Associated Press.
Gun theft is a problem, whether from retailers or private citizens. That much was clear when AmmoLand News looked at gun thefts from vehicles six months ago, in November 2024. However, when the gun prohibition lobby acknowledges gun thefts, it amounts to a refutation of their argument that restrictive gun control laws will keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Apparently, this fact appears to escape their logic, or perhaps anti-gunners just hope the public won’t see the discrepancy, regardless how glaring it is.
D.C. Double Slaying: Suspect Crossed State Lines, Media Ignores Lesson
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
