NASHVILLE – On a Sunday in January 2022, a Glock 9mm pistol, serial number AFDN559, disappeared from a Dodge Charger parked near a bank in Midtown Nashville after someone smashed the rear driver’s side window.
Ten months later, Nashville police officers arrested three teenage suspects in a series of shootings and discovered a cache of weapons in a nearby apartment. Among them was AFDN559. Forensic analysts would later link the Glock to three shootings, including an attack in August that injured four young men and another that injured a 17-year-old girl in September.
In a country full of guns, with more firearms than people, the parked car, or in many cases the parked pickup truck, has become a new flashpoint in debates about how and whether to regulate safety of weapons
There is little question about the extent of the problem. A report issued in May by the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety analyzed FBI crime data from 271 U.S. cities, large and small, as of 2020 and found that guns stolen from vehicles they have become the largest source of stolen firearms in the country, by one estimate. 40,000 guns stolen from cars in these cities alone.
In some cities, organized groups of youths have swept neighborhoods and areas around sports fields, looking for weapons left under car seats or in unlocked center consoles or glove boxes. Their work is occasionally made easier by motorists who advertise their right to bear arms with car window stickers promoting favorite gun brands, or declaring “molon labe,” a defiant message from ancient Sparta, which roughly translates as “come and take them”.
More and more, thieves are doing it. Everytown researchers found that a decade ago, less than a quarter of all gun thefts were from cars; in 2020, more than half of them were. Researchers say more studies are needed to understand the shift, which has come as more states have adopted permit-less carry laws and gun industry marketing messages have encouraged Americans to carry guns with them to protect themselves personally.
And as the problem has grown, public health officials and lawmakers, including some in Tennessee, have proposed a rather prosaic solution: encouraging or requiring gun-toting drivers to store their weapons in their vehicles in boxes ‘resistant and blockable weapons.
Gun control advocates hope that the adoption of safes in cars will be seen as a solution that both sides of the gun debate can accept, just as both sides encourage the use of safes and locks trigger in the home.
“I think safe storage is where we find a lot of common ground,” said Christian Heyne, vice president of policy and programs at Brady, the gun violence prevention organization.
But some experts say widespread adoption of the boxes may require a dramatic cultural shift similar to the revolution in seat belt use. And it can be even more polarizing than seat belts. The National Rifle Association and other gun rights advocates believe car safe box mandates are an onerous burden, a reflection of how the avalanche of guns is creating new sources of conflict.
Many safes are relatively inexpensive. Simple versions that attach to the bottom of a car seat with a cable can be found for about $40, and some cities have even started developing programs to give them away. In Houston, where more than 4,400 guns were stolen from cars last year, police have given away roughly 700 such cases this year, according to Houston police Sgt. Tracy Hicks, and they have plans to give away 6,300 more.
Some skeptics doubt that even widespread use of the boxes would make much of an impact on gun violence in a nation with more than 400 million firearms in circulation. “It’s like peeing in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Peter Scharf, a criminologist at Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans, which had one of the nation’s highest homicide rates in 2022.
In Nashville, the number of guns reported stolen from cars there jumped nearly tenfold over the past decade, to a record 1,378 in 2022, up from 152 in 2012, according to police data. The city’s carjacking rate was the 15th highest in the country in 2020, according to FBI figures. The situation was even worse in Memphis, Tennessee’s second-largest city, which had the highest rate of carjackings in the nation that year, according to the Everytown analysis.
It’s hard to know how many stolen guns are used in crimes, in part because only 15 states have laws requiring the reporting of lost or stolen guns. “We don’t ask enough questions about where the weapons used in crime come from,” said Mr. Heyne.
Tennessee’s Republican-dominated state legislature is considering a pair of bills with bipartisan support that would explicitly prohibit leaving a firearm in a motor vehicle or boat unless it is “locked in the trunk, utility or glove compartment, or a securely closed container.”
The only allowable punishment, under the bill, would be enrollment in a court-approved firearms safety course. It’s an intentionally soft approach designed to help create acceptance, rather than another culture war battle, said Rep. Caleb Hemmer, a Nashville-area Democrat who sponsored the House bill.
“We’re comparing it to a speeding ticket,” said Mr. Hemmer. “We know we’re in a conservative state and we’re trying to get people to be responsible gun owners.”
Mr. Hemmer believes there is a connection between the increase in the number of guns stolen from cars in Nashville and the loosening of state gun laws, including a 2021 permit-free carry law.
The bill of Mr. Hemmer has the support of Nashville Police Chief John C. Drake, who wrote a letter to legislative leaders on Tuesday saying that the high-profile robbery and killing of a local country musician, Kyle Yorlets, in 2019 was carried out by youths with a gun stolen from a vehicle.
“Gun ownership carries a serious responsibility on several fronts, including securing guns, especially in motor vehicles, so that they do not fall into the hands of thieves/violent criminals,” Drake wrote.
Tennessee’s safe deposit box legislation is already generating controversy, an indication of how staunchly gun-rights advocates oppose almost any law that could restrict gun owners.
Law opposes NRA Amy Hunter, a spokeswoman for the NRA, called Mr. Hemmer in a statement and said he would discourage robbery victims from reporting stolen guns to police.
“This law can only be enforced if someone’s gun is stolen, the victim later reports the theft and admits the gun was not safe, at which point the theft victim is charged with a crime,” he said. to say.
In Chapel Hill, Tenn., a small town about 30 miles south of Nashville, David Henley, 51, owner of the gun store Tennessee Armory and Outdoor Supply, had a similar vision.
It would be better, he said, to increase the penalties for thieves. “If you’re in your house and there’s a package sitting on your porch, and a criminal comes and steals it, it’s the same thing,” he said. “Who is the criminal?”
Representative John Gillespie, a Memphis Republican who co-sponsored Mr. Hemmer, was frustrated by these arguments. “I’m more than willing to increase the penalties for people who steal a gun,” he said. “But are we really so burdened to ask someone to properly lock their gun in a vehicle so it can’t be stolen?”
Some states, including California, Oregon, New York, and New Jersey, already have laws requiring that guns be locked in cars.
Several similarly themed bills are being considered in other states, including Hawaii and Florida. A Virginia bill, introduced by a Democratic senator in that state’s Republican-controlled upper house, did not survive the 2023 legislative session, which ended at the end of February.
Cities are also taking action. In January, the Atlanta City Council passed an ordinance that sought to create a safe deposit box gift program. In New Orleans, Tulane University’s Institute for Violence Prevention has begun giving away gun safes with biometric fingerprint locks at a local hospital.
“The hard part is when you talk to people about why they carry guns in their cars, it’s about safety and protection. And when you talk about safes, the rebuttal is, ‘Well, I don’t have quick access to my gun.’ , said Julia Fleckman, co-director of the Tulane Institute.
In St. Louis, police recently began actively enforcing a five-year-old law that requires guns to be stored in locked containers. Nick Dunne, a spokesman for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, noted that judges are giving people a chance to have their cases dismissed if they show the court they bought a safe.
Mr. Dunne said that of the 192 citations written last year, about three-quarters of them were issued to people who did not live in St. Louis. Louis, an indication of how political and cultural differences between cities and rural and suburban areas help fuel the problem.
Houston Police Sgt. Hicks says part of his job is trying to get the word out to people who come to town for big sporting events.
Sgt. Hicks said it’s not just out-of-town visitors who are targeted by gun thieves, though he said they know to look for clues that suggest a gun is more likely to be in a car.
“You have a Prius with a unicorn sticker or a big F250 with a Glock sticker,” he said, referring to the popular Ford pickup truck. “Which one is more likely to get stuck?”
