A trend I’ve noticed in the general metro Atlanta area over the last few months is the sheer rise of car break-ins happening all around city proper, and the seemingly hopeless south side of the city that I once lived in myself but just a few years ago. And not just any ordinary smash-and-grabs, where thieves are looking for whatever free shit that happened to be in sight which compelled them to break-in in the first place that they could flip for some quick cash, but thefts where thieves are searching out, and way more often than I thought should be considered normal, stealing guns.
My old neighborhood’s Nextdoor, that I’ve admitted to not being able to unsubscribe to for the sheer amount of unintentional entertainment I get out of it, has seen way too many threads over the last few months of people detailing all the cars that have been broken into, where among other things, guns were stolen. Not just at their homes, but when they’re out at dinner, or out at Publix, or any of the nearby shopping areas where people would park their cars in public.
But it really boils down to the fact that I have to ask, why so many people even bother keeping guns in their cars in the first place?
Personally, I have no real qualms with the second amendment. I do question why ordinary citizens would need SEAL team grade sniper rifles or assault rifles, but ultimately I don’t have a problem with people getting firearms with the intent to protect themselves. It’s only when things go dark and people are using legally obtained weaponry to do bad things, is where I raise my eyebrows, but we can’t control the rest of the world no matter how much we’d like to be able to sometimes.
Back to the topic on hand though, I’m not so much flabbergasted at the repeated instances where people are having guns stolen from their vehicles, as much as I am curious to why people are bothering to leave guns in their cars in the first place. License to carry, I get that, but that also implies that you’re actually carrying, and not leaving your firearms in vehicles that are one locked door away from being obtainable by absolutely anyone.
Frankly, I don’t understand the benefit of leaving a gun in the glove box or side compartment, even if you’re in the car with it. It’s not like a cop or an attacker wouldn’t notice you having to dive in some direction and need to open some sort of door in order to get to it, and that’s not even taking in to account any sort of chambering, safety removal or anything else that would be microseconds of delay in order to begin defending yourself. The whole idea of stashing a gun in the car as a means of defense seems like a very weak defense in the first place.
Instead, thieves across the city have figured out that a whole bunch of free firearms, mostly untraceable to themselves, are available all around the city, located in weakly-defended and unattended cars. Whether they smash a window or pop a lock, a single door is all that stands in the way of people who are perpetually on the hunt for free guns, that they’ll inevitably turn on someone else in the future.
I mean the solve is pretty easy, but people simply aren’t getting the idea that not keeping guns in your cars means that people can’t steal them from your cars. Whether it’s just stupidity, arrogance, a disbelief that it couldn’t happen to them or perhaps a combination of all of the above, people are still leaving their guns in their cars, but then acting flabbergasted and violated when their shit gets stolen.
Frankly I’ll never understand it. Especially after all the hoops and pain in the ass it is to legally acquire guns in the first place, the last place I’d leave one is the flimsy defense of a car. But hey, the more people want to contribute to the unintentional arming and increasing the danger of the metro area, that’s their stupidity. Unfortunately, it only means that a lot of bad people are becoming more and more armed, and the need for defense is only going to increase, and as long as more people come across guns, the more chances there are, that they’ll leave them in their cars, and then write on Nextdoor about how disappointed they are with their communities when they get stolen.
