Gun Thefts From Cars Stoke Alarm Over Rising Violence

The majority of gun homicides and assaults involve illegal guns, and the latest data and research supports the fact that criminals are getting these guns by stealing them from unlocked cars across the country, according to new research published by Everytown for Gun Safety.

The research, published on Monday, emphasizes the fact that on average, at least one gun is stolen from a car every 15 minutes in America. 

Advocates say this is an alarming trend considering shootings are rising nationwide, and law enforcement agencies are already struggling to handle the influx of guns into nearly every neighborhood, according to the report.

Advocates call for securing guns at all times and in all locations, noting that cars parked at residences — in driveways and outside of homes — are the most common places a gun is stolen from an unlocked car.

This trend of stealing guns from cars is not new. 

In 2019 – 2020, America saw recent history’s biggest spike in gun thefts from cars, which happened simultaneously with spikes in gun sales and homicides. However, a decade ago, less than a quarter of gun thefts were from cars; in 2020, the trend was over half, Everytown reports. 

Tracking the exact number of gun violence injuries and victims related to these gun thefts is difficult, but not impossible. 

On July 22, 2021, a gun was stolen from an unlocked car in Riverside, Florida. Twelve days later, the gun was used in the murder of a 27-year-old US Coast Guard member Caroline Schollaert as she attempted to intervene in an attempted car burglary of her own vehicle, Everytown and NBC News reports. 

““Imagine what it would be like to lose a child over something as simple as locking a door?” said her father, Patrick Schollaert, who spoke to NBC News.

Looking at the Numbers

The research from Everytown used reported data from cities directly reported to the FBI. In the data, the researchers looked through FBI crime data spanning 271 small- to large-size cities across 38 states. 

Collectively, these cities cover 49 million people, the report details. 

Moreover, the data shows that an estimated 77,000 firearms were reported stolen across these cities alone — and that’s “likely a conservative estimate,” the researchers note, considering “only 15 states require gun owners to report lost and stolen guns.”

Considering the average rates show that a gun was stolen from a car every 15 minutes, this amounts to “to an estimated 40,000 guns stolen from cars in 2020 across these 271 cities,” according to the full report.

Everytown also notes that the top five cities with the highest rates of gun thefts from cars are Memphis, TN (193.9 per 100,000 people), Chattanooga, TN (193.1 per 100,000 people), Columbia, SC (172.6 per 100,000 people), North Charleston, SC (165.0 per 100,000 people), and Warner Robins, GA (162.9 per 100,000 people). 

Armed with this data, the Everytown researchers concluded that cities located in states with particularly weak gun laws are “associated with greater rates of gun thefts from cars.”

“Criminals are opportunists,” Everytown president John Feinblatt told NBC News. “They’ll go where they think that they can capture guns and flood the black market with little or less risk.”

Moreover, what’s interesting, the researchers note, is that this spike in guns being stolen from unlocked cars are not associated with an increase in thefts from cars in general.

“In fact, the overall rate of thefts from cars (not gun-specific) has decreased somewhat over the past decade (-15 percent), while the rate of gun thefts from cars has soared (+225 percent) in cities that report data to the FBI,” the researchers note.  

Some police chiefs speculate that a combination of unlocked cars and increasing numbers of young people engaging in this particular crime type may be relevant as well. 

Solutions for Change

“With gun ownership comes responsibility,” the Everytown report concludes. “[G]un owners have a responsibility to build public awareness around the importance of, and best practices for, secure storage in cars, especially at a time when gun thefts from cars are at an all-time high and carry the additional risk of fueling future violence.

Going hand-in-hand with gun ownership responsibility, Everytown researchers advocate for “commonsense gun violence prevention initiatives” like: 

• • Secure storage laws;
  • Lost and stolen reporting laws;
  • Public awareness campaigns, like BE SMART; and,
  • Devices that offer secure gun storage for cars.

Overall, the researchers suggest that policymakers, local leaders, and law enforcement alike have a duty to build “public awareness” around the importance of best practices, reporting missing or stolen firearms, and limiting potential risk to anyone in the future. 

“This is going to affect more than just the isolated person like me,” Schollaert warned, talking to NBC News about the loss of his daughter. “More and more people are going to be grieving like me, senselessly.”

Megan J. O’Toole is the Everytown Deputy Research Director and lead author of this paper. Her work focuses on city gun violence, violence prevention programs, and police violence.

Jay Szkola is a Data Scientist at Everytown. Jay is also a Ph.D. candidate at John Jay College of Criminal Justice / The Graduate Center where his research interest involves spacial-temporal patterns of crime, gun violence interventions, and concealed carry permitting. 

Sarah Burd-Sharps is the Everytown  Director of Research, where she combines her background of work on poverty, gender equality, and economic empowerment at the UN and the Social Science Research Council to lead Everytown’s research department.

The full report can be accessed here. 

This summary was prepared by TCR Associate Editor Andrea Cipriano