In the early morning of July 5, NYPD Officer Miosotis Familia was killed by a gunman in an ambush attack while patrolling a Bronx neighborhood. Just weeks earlier, on the other side of the country, a UPS employee entered his San Francisco workplace armed with two guns and opened fire, killing three of his coworkers and injuring two others before turning the gun on himself. While seemingly unrelated, these examples of gun violence share one common feature: Both were committed with stolen firearms.
It a well-known fact of modern American life that we collectively own a massive number of guns — the best guess places the number at about 300 million. One of the risks inherent in this level of gun ownership is theft. Indeed, a new analysis by the Center for American Progress of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found that a gun is stolen in the U.S. every two minutes.
The above excerpt was originally published in Los Angeles Times.
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