CCJ releases new crime report, "Trends in Gun Theft: Leveraging Data to Inform Crime Policy"

The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) continues its important and timely work on modern crime realities with the release ofthis new report, titled ""Trends in Gun Theft: Leveraging Data to Inform Crime Policy."  Here is some text from the start of the report, which was authored by Deborah Azrael and Susan T. Parker:

Hundreds of thousands of crimes involving firearms occur each year in the United States. In 2022, for example, guns were used in more than three quarters of murders, one third of robberies, and a quarter of aggravated assaults. But less is known about how people who use guns in violence acquire their weapons.

One source of guns used in crimes is theft. While research on the role of gun theft in gun crime is limited, a small but growing body of evidence suggests that stolen guns may play a significant role in violent crime. Stolen guns are more likely than other guns to be recovered in crimes, and gun crime appears to increase in neighborhoods from which guns have been recently stolen. Despite the potential importance of stolen guns as a source of guns used in crime, data on gun theft trends are limited.

This report explores gun theft incidents reported to law enforcement using data from 2,098 law enforcement agencies that consistently reported crime data to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) from 2018 to 2022, the most recent five-year period for which data were available when the analysis was conducted....

Rates of gun theft reported to law enforcement remained relatively stable from 2018 to 2022 at between 70 and 80 guns stolen per 100,000 people. But rates increased by 42% in large urban areas over the period, while declining by 22% in rural areas....

The rate of guns reported stolen from motor vehicles increased by 31% over the period, while the rate of guns reported stolen during residential and commercial burglaries dropped by 40%. Rates of gun thefts from vehicles were highest and rose the most steeply in the most rural areas.