The majority of gun homicides and assaults involve stolen or illegal guns. But where do these guns come from, and how are they getting into dangerous hands? Research from Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund finds that in cities that report data to the FBI, gun thefts from cars are the largest source of stolen guns.
In order to understand the scope of the problem, Everytown analyzed crime data from 337 small- to large-size cities across 44 states—covering roughly 63 million people—obtained from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Analyses revealed that in 2022, nearly 112,000 guns were reported stolen in these cities. This is likely a conservative estimate since only a third of US states legally require reporting of lost and stolen guns to law enforcement, and thus thousands of missing guns go unreported annually. While guns can be stolen in a variety of ways and places (e.g., from people’s houses or from gun shops, or individuals directly), in 2022, just over half (51 percent) were stolen from cars. This amounted to nearly 62,000 guns stolen from cars in 2022 across these 337 cities.
