"Gun theft: The crime that keeps on giving . . ."
I just read an article in the Chicago Tribune that tracked the history of one of the nine guns stolen during the burglary of a Gun Shop in Wisconsin.
The article reports that: “In little over a month it was on the streets of Chicago, where it would be fired over and over and over, linked to some 27 shootings before it was taken off the streets. An extended magazine, which increases firepower, was attached.”
A cross-jurisdictional team of Chicago PD detectives, forensic technicians, and ATF Agents, executing new policy-driven tactics - and good old-fashioned police work - learned with help from ATF’s National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN) - that the stolen gun was the weapon used in the shootings of two dozen people – two fatally.
The article identifies the person finally caught with the stolen gun used to harm so many people, by still unidentified criminals. The possessor, a victim once himself, did time for his crime of possession. He carried the gun - he said - out of fear of becoming a victim again.
With so many incidents of gun-related violence reported in the media today, we tend to become tone-deaf to the numbers we hear or the headlines we see like – "20 shot over the weekend 5 fatally". What we sometimes tend to forget is that those numbers are people - sons and daughters - mothers and fathers - sisters and brothers - friends and neighbors.
The murdered victims were part of our community, our country – our society. Those living victims remain so in whole, or in part and painful, recovery. For the loved ones of the deceased, their pain from the loss will never heal. Their sorrow deepens when resolution and justice seem to have passed them by.
Read this article, it adds the names and faces and stories to the number of victimizations shown above.
Much is written today about reducing the number of shootings and victimizations occurring in our cities. Law enforcement works hard every day - often in harm’s way - to make it happen.
That said, it will never alleviate the responsibility that our society has to continue to seek justice for the victims, resolution for their loved ones, and peace for their neighbors.
Gun Theft is the crime that keeps on giving . . .most often nothing but pain and sorrow!
Here is the link to the article:
PS: A stolen gun threatens everyone. We must do our part to secure our guns from unauthorized access. There are both “low-tech” and “high-tech” solutions available today to help secure our firearms in a manner that suits our purposes for owning them. Secure and under our control - like our lives or those of a loved one or neighbor depended on it.
