Sensible Gun Safety

[Farfromgeneva]

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/358 ... ing-charge

More guns makes us safer.

Where was The Glove?

Probably driving

Would’ve been better off doing the Damon Stoudamire/RaSHEED Wallace!

But if the Glove fits you must acquit!

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/358 ... ng-charges

Why not call the police?

[Seacoaster(1)]

Interesting development:

https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinion ... 112314.pdf

[Seacoaster(1)]

Pop-Up evacuation rooms for kids!! Fun stuff.

https://twitter.com/Tim_Tweeted/status/ ... 0725535745

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/20/americas ... index.html

[Farfromgeneva]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/20/americas ... index.html

Carlos Slim is going to build a wall

[jhu72]

Denver East school shooting in progress. MAGA.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Denver East school shooting in progress. MAGA.

From one of the early reports:

"The suspected shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day, officials said. He allegedly shot the school administrators as they patted him down Wednesday morning in the school's office area, which officials said is away from other students and staff.

The suspect's daily searches were part of a "safety plan" that was a result of "previous behavior," officials said, though they did not elaborate on the previous behavior."

Juvenile; Dad's or Mom's firearm?

[ardilla secreta]

This country just keeps getting weirder every day

The shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day?

A juvenile who’s required to be searched at the beginning of each school day still gets access to a firearm?

[Seacoaster(1)]

This country just keeps getting weirder every day

The shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day?

A juvenile who’s required to be searched at the beginning of each school day still gets access to a firearm?

'Murica.

[jhu72]

This country just keeps getting weirder every day

The shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day?

A juvenile who’s required to be searched at the beginning of each school day still gets access to a firearm?

'Murica.

MAGA

[Typical Lax Dad]

Denver East school shooting in progress. MAGA.

From one of the early reports:

"The suspected shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day, officials said. He allegedly shot the school administrators as they patted him down Wednesday morning in the school's office area, which officials said is away from other students and staff.

The suspect's daily searches were part of a "safety plan" that was a result of "previous behavior," officials said, though they did not elaborate on the previous behavior."

Juvenile; Dad's or Mom's firearm?

Hillary didn’t take it away.

[a fan]

Denver East school shooting in progress. MAGA.

From one of the early reports:

"The suspected shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day, officials said. He allegedly shot the school administrators as they patted him down Wednesday morning in the school's office area, which officials said is away from other students and staff.

The suspect's daily searches were part of a "safety plan" that was a result of "previous behavior," officials said, though they did not elaborate on the previous behavior."

Juvenile; Dad's or Mom's firearm?

Hillary didn’t take it away.

Last straw for many teachers.

Parents better start pressuring school boards around the country to let teachers kick kids the F out of school---expel them-----or we're not gonna have teachers anymore. It's literally the ONLY profession where you are FORCED to work in a hostile work environment, with no power to fix it.

If I'm a Union head? I'm suing the State for allowing a hostile work environment. They should have the same civil recourse that every other person that works somewhere has. Create the red tape and paper trail. But in the end, if you create a hostile school environment? Expulsion.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Denver East school shooting in progress. MAGA.

From one of the early reports:

"The suspected shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day, officials said. He allegedly shot the school administrators as they patted him down Wednesday morning in the school's office area, which officials said is away from other students and staff.

The suspect's daily searches were part of a "safety plan" that was a result of "previous behavior," officials said, though they did not elaborate on the previous behavior."

Juvenile; Dad's or Mom's firearm?

Hillary didn’t take it away.

Last straw for many teachers.

Parents better start pressuring school boards around the country to let teachers kick kids the F out of school---expel them-----or we're not gonna have teachers anymore. It's literally the ONLY profession where you are FORCED to work in a hostile work environment, with no power to fix it.

If I'm a Union head? I'm suing the State for allowing a hostile work environment. They should have the same civil recourse that every other person that works somewhere has. Create the red tape and paper trail. But in the end, if you create a hostile school environment? Expulsion.

It’s insane. I am a “get kids that are real problems out of the building” kind if guy. The job is hard enough.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Denver East school shooting in progress. MAGA.

From one of the early reports:

"The suspected shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day, officials said. He allegedly shot the school administrators as they patted him down Wednesday morning in the school's office area, which officials said is away from other students and staff.

The suspect's daily searches were part of a "safety plan" that was a result of "previous behavior," officials said, though they did not elaborate on the previous behavior."

Juvenile; Dad's or Mom's firearm?

Hillary didn’t take it away.

Last straw for many teachers.

Parents better start pressuring school boards around the country to let teachers kick kids the F out of school---expel them-----or we're not gonna have teachers anymore. It's literally the ONLY profession where you are FORCED to work in a hostile work environment, with no power to fix it.

If I'm a Union head? I'm suing the State for allowing a hostile work environment. They should have the same civil recourse that every other person that works somewhere has. Create the red tape and paper trail. But in the end, if you create a hostile school environment? Expulsion.

It’s insane. I am a “get kids that are real problems out of the building” kind if guy. The job is hard enough.

Again, an example that cries out for regulation:

Where did the kid get the weapon? If it is from Dad's or Mom's home stockade, then strict liability should attach to any use or misuse of the gun outside the home.

Why was the kid on a stop and frisk protocol already?

We have to start balancing Second Amendment rights against the right of the rest of us to be free of bullet wounds, grievous injury, death and the psychic trauma of seeing our friends and teachers murdered. Sorry for being such a snowflake.

[cradleandshoot]

Denver East school shooting in progress. MAGA.

From one of the early reports:

"The suspected shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day, officials said. He allegedly shot the school administrators as they patted him down Wednesday morning in the school's office area, which officials said is away from other students and staff.

The suspect's daily searches were part of a "safety plan" that was a result of "previous behavior," officials said, though they did not elaborate on the previous behavior."

Juvenile; Dad's or Mom's firearm?

Hillary didn’t take it away.

Last straw for many teachers.

Parents better start pressuring school boards around the country to let teachers kick kids the F out of school---expel them-----or we're not gonna have teachers anymore. It's literally the ONLY profession where you are FORCED to work in a hostile work environment, with no power to fix it.

If I'm a Union head? I'm suing the State for allowing a hostile work environment. They should have the same civil recourse that every other person that works somewhere has. Create the red tape and paper trail. But in the end, if you create a hostile school environment? Expulsion.

It’s insane. I am a “get kids that are real problems out of the building” kind if guy. The job is hard enough.

Again, an example that cries out for regulation:

Where did the kid get the weapon? If it is from Dad's or Mom's home stockade, then strict liability should attach to any use or misuse of the gun outside the home.

Why was the kid on a stop and frisk protocol already?

We have to start balancing Second Amendment rights against the right of the rest of us to be free of bullet wounds, grievous injury, death and the psychic trauma of seeing our friends and teachers murdered. Sorry for being such a snowflake.

The answer is very obvious. In what parallel universe does it become the responsibility of the school to check if this student is carrying a weapon?? The student should not be allowed in the school building. Why wasn't the student expelled and a restraining order keeping him 1000 feet away from any school? The solution was to single him out and inspect the content of his backpack every day?? The 64 thousand dollar question is why the parents have not had all of their weapons confiscated since they seem unable to secure these weapons from their disturbed child. It is okay for you to be a snowflake in this instance Mr Coaster. Maybe I can finally drag you kicking and screaming into the nasty world of criminals and illegal weapons. Your attempt at melodrama falls flat on its face. Your focused on the schools, which is a noble effort. I'm focused on felons with illegal weapons that are responsible for the EVERYDAY carnage on the streets of our cities. You have NO solution or opinion on that issue do you counselor?? If you do you must be keeping it under your hat.

[youthathletics]

Last straw for many teachers.

Parents better start pressuring school boards around the country to let teachers kick kids the F out of school---expel them-----or we're not gonna have teachers anymore. It's literally the ONLY profession where you are FORCED to work in a hostile work environment, with no power to fix it.

If I'm a Union head? I'm suing the State for allowing a hostile work environment. They should have the same civil recourse that every other person that works somewhere has. Create the red tape and paper trail. But in the end, if you create a hostile school environment? Expulsion.

+100

Read this to my wife, a teacher, and she was shaking her head yes to everything you said. She said the buzz word that schools all follow and throw around daily is 'inclusiveness'....which provides broad cover for everything. Teachers, as you know, are already under a $h1t ton of pressure to document damned near everything to cover their arse.

[Seacoaster(1)]

An article for C&S. Stolen Gun source: the car --

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/us/i ... -cars.html

"On a Sunday in January 2022, a Glock 9mm pistol, serial number AFDN559, disappeared from a Dodge Charger parked near a Midtown Nashville bank after someone smashed in the rear driver’s side window.

Ten months later, Nashville police officers arrested three teenagers suspected in a series of shootings, and discovered a cache of weapons in a nearby apartment. Among them was AFDN559. Forensic analysts would later tie the Glock to three shootings, including an attack in August that wounded four youths and another that wounded a 17-year-old girl in September.

In a country awash with guns, with more firearms than people, the parked car, or in many cases the parked pickup truck, has become a new flashpoint in the debates over how and whether to regulate gun safety.

There is little question about the scope of the problem. A report issued in May by the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety analyzed FBI crime data in 271 American cities, large and small, from 2020 and found that guns stolen from vehicles have become the nation’s largest source of stolen firearms — with an estimated 40,000 guns stolen from cars in those cities alone.

In some cities, organized groups of young people have swept through neighborhoods and areas around sports arenas, looking for weapons left under car seats or in unlocked center consoles or glove compartments. Their work is occasionally made easier by motorists who advertise their right to bear arms with car window stickers promoting favored gun brands, or that declare “molon labe” — a defiant message from ancient Sparta, which roughly translates as “come and take them.”

Increasingly, thieves are doing just that. The Everytown researchers found that a decade ago, less than a quarter of all gun thefts were from cars; in 2020, over half of them were. The researchers say more study is needed to understand the shift, which has occurred as more states have adopted permitless carry laws and messages in gun-industry marketing have encouraged Americans to take their weapons with them for personal protection.

And as the problem has grown, public health officials and lawmakers, including some in Tennessee, have proposed a rather prosaic solution: encouraging or mandating that gun-toting drivers store their weapons in their vehicles inside of sturdy, lockable gun boxes.

Gun control advocates are hoping that the adoption of the boxes in cars will come to be seen as a solution that both sides of the gun debate can accept, much as both sides encourage the use of gun safes and trigger locks in the home.

“I do think that 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 change akin to the revolution in seatbelt use. And it may prove to be even more polarizing than seatbelts ever were. The National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates believe car lockbox mandates to be an onerous burden — a reflection of how the avalanche of guns is creating new sources of conflict.

Many lockboxes are relatively cheap. Simple versions that can attach to the underside of a car seat with a cable can be found for about $40, and some cities have even begun developing programs to give them away. In Houston, where more than 4,400 guns were stolen from cars last year, the police have given away roughly 700 such boxes this year, according to Houston Police Sgt. Tracy Hicks, and have plans to give away 6,300 more.

Some skeptics doubt even widespread use of the boxes would make much of a dent in 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 the 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 increased nearly tenfold over the last decade, to a record 1,378 in 2022 from 152 in 2012, according to police data. The city’s rate of gun thefts from cars was the 15th highest in the country in 2020, based on FBI figures. The situation was even worse in Memphis, Tennessee’s second-largest city, which had the highest rate of gun thefts from cars in the nation that year, according to the Everytown analysis.

It is difficult 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 where guns used in crime come from,” Mr. Heyne said.

Tennessee’s Republican-dominated state legislature is considering a pair of bills with bipartisan support that would explicitly outlaw leaving a firearm in a motor vehicle or boat unless it is “locked within the trunk, utility or glove box, or a locked container securely affixed.”

The only allowable punishment, under the bill, would be enrollment in a court-approved firearm safety course. It is a purposely mild approach engineered to help create buy-in, rather than another culture-war battle, said Representative Caleb Hemmer, a Nashville-area Democrat who sponsored the House bill.

“We’re likening it to a speeding ticket,” Mr. Hemmer said. “We know we’re in a conservative state, and we’re trying to convince people to be responsible gun owners.”

Mr. Hemmer believes there is a relationship between the spike in the number of guns stolen from cars in Nashville and the loosening of state gun laws, including a 2021 permitless carry law.

Mr. Hemmer’s bill is supported by John C. Drake, the Nashville Police chief, who on Tuesday wrote a letter to legislative leaders in which he mentioned that the high-profile robbery and killing of a local country musician, Kyle Yorlets, in 2019 was carried out by youths using a pistol stolen from a vehicle.

“With gun ownership comes serious responsibility on several fronts, including securing guns, particularly in motor vehicles, so that they do not come into the hands of thieves/violent criminals,” Mr. Drake wrote.

The Tennessee lockbox legislation is already generating controversy, an indication of how steadfastly gun-rights advocates oppose nearly any laws that might restrict gun owners.

The legislation is opposed by the N.R.A. Amy Hunter, an N.R.A. spokeswoman, called Mr. Hemmer’s bill “feckless” in a statement and said it would discourage theft victims from reporting the stolen guns to the police.

“This law can only be enforced if someone’s gun is stolen, the victim then reports the theft and admits the gun was unsecured — at which point the theft victim is charged with a crime,” she said.

In Chapel Hill, Tenn., a small town about 50 miles south of Nashville, David Henley, 51, the owner of the gun store Tennessee Armory and Outdoor Supply, had a similar view.

It would be better, he said, to increase penalties for the thieves. “If you’re at your house and a package is sitting on your porch, and a criminal comes and steals it, it’s the same thing,” he said. “Who’s the criminal?”

Representative John Gillespie, a Memphis Republican who co-sponsored Mr. Hemmer’s bill, was frustrated by such arguments. “I’m more than willing to increase the penalties for people stealing a gun,” he said. “But are we really that burdened by asking someone to properly lock up their gun in a vehicle so it can’t be stolen?”

Laws mandating that guns in cars be locked away are already on the books in some states, including California, Oregon, New York and New Jersey.

A number of similarly themed bills are under consideration in other states including Hawaii and Florida. A Virginia bill, introduced by a Democratic senator in that state’s Republican-controlled upper chamber, did not survive the 2023 legislative session, which ended in late February.

Cities are also taking action. In January, the Atlanta City Council passed an ordinance seeking to create a lockbox giveaway program. In New Orleans, Tulane University’s Violence Prevention Institute has begun giving away gun boxes with biometric thumbprint locks at a local hospital.

“The hard thing is, when you talk to people about why they carry guns in cars, it’s about safety and protection. And when you talk about lockboxes, 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 have recently begun actively enforcing a five-year-old law that mandates that guns be stored in locked containers. Nick Dunne, a spokesman for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, noted that judges are giving people the opportunity to have their cases dismissed if they show the court that they have purchased a lockbox.

Mr. Dunne said that of 192 citations written last year, roughly three-quarters of them were issued to people who did not live in St. Louis — an indication of how the political and cultural differences between cities and rural and suburban areas help fuel the problem.

Houston Police Sgt. Hicks says that part of his job involves trying to get the word out to people who come in town for big sporting events.

Sgt. Hicks said that it is not just out of town visitors who are targeted by gun thieves, although he said that they know to look for clues that suggest a gun is more likely to be in a car.

“You’ve got 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 broken into?”

[Farfromgeneva]

Candler Park Music Festival is ending after 11 years

Rodney Ho
ajc.com
Credit: Contributed

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is providing this content as part of our public service mission. Please support real, local journalism by subscribing today.
The Candler Park Music Festival, which typically happens in June, is ending after 11 years.

The creator Josh Antenucci made the announcement on social media Monday, the same day that the annual Decatur Book Festival was postponed until 2024.

“It’s been an incredible run!” he wrote. “Thanks to all who have supported along the way and helped make this festival possible. While necessary to change things, there are plenty more good times ahead.”

By Visit Central Florida
Advertiser Content
Step into Peppa Pig's world: 1 of Central Florida's newest theme parks

In a text, he declined to comment further.

The Candler Park Music Festival Facebook page implied that something else might take its place down the road: “Stay tuned. We’ll all be together in Candler Park again soon.”

Last year’s two-day festival in June featured Grace Potter, Disco Biscuits and Yonder Mountain String Band. Previous festivals featured acts like Galactic, Gov. Mule, Dispatch, Robert Randolph and Drive-By Truckers.

Last summer, Music Midtown was abruptly canceled and sources told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a law that prohibits short-term permit holders on public property to ban guns may have played a role in that cancellation. Sweetwater 420 recently announced it was downsizing its festival from Centennial Olympic Park to its own private property for unspecified “personal safety” reasons.

Some festivals are still happening, including Shaky Knees Festival at Central Park in May and the new Re-Set Festival in June in the same location.

[cradleandshoot]

An article for C&S. Stolen Gun source: the car --

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/us/i ... -cars.html

"On a Sunday in January 2022, a Glock 9mm pistol, serial number AFDN559, disappeared from a Dodge Charger parked near a Midtown Nashville bank after someone smashed in the rear driver’s side window.

Ten months later, Nashville police officers arrested three teenagers suspected in a series of shootings, and discovered a cache of weapons in a nearby apartment. Among them was AFDN559. Forensic analysts would later tie the Glock to three shootings, including an attack in August that wounded four youths and another that wounded a 17-year-old girl in September.

In a country awash with guns, with more firearms than people, the parked car, or in many cases the parked pickup truck, has become a new flashpoint in the debates over how and whether to regulate gun safety.

There is little question about the scope of the problem. A report issued in May by the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety analyzed FBI crime data in 271 American cities, large and small, from 2020 and found that guns stolen from vehicles have become the nation’s largest source of stolen firearms — with an estimated 40,000 guns stolen from cars in those cities alone.

In some cities, organized groups of young people have swept through neighborhoods and areas around sports arenas, looking for weapons left under car seats or in unlocked center consoles or glove compartments. Their work is occasionally made easier by motorists who advertise their right to bear arms with car window stickers promoting favored gun brands, or that declare “molon labe” — a defiant message from ancient Sparta, which roughly translates as “come and take them.”

Increasingly, thieves are doing just that. The Everytown researchers found that a decade ago, less than a quarter of all gun thefts were from cars; in 2020, over half of them were. The researchers say more study is needed to understand the shift, which has occurred as more states have adopted permitless carry laws and messages in gun-industry marketing have encouraged Americans to take their weapons with them for personal protection.

And as the problem has grown, public health officials and lawmakers, including some in Tennessee, have proposed a rather prosaic solution: encouraging or mandating that gun-toting drivers store their weapons in their vehicles inside of sturdy, lockable gun boxes.

Gun control advocates are hoping that the adoption of the boxes in cars will come to be seen as a solution that both sides of the gun debate can accept, much as both sides encourage the use of gun safes and trigger locks in the home.

“I do think that 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 change akin to the revolution in seatbelt use. And it may prove to be even more polarizing than seatbelts ever were. The National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates believe car lockbox mandates to be an onerous burden — a reflection of how the avalanche of guns is creating new sources of conflict.

Many lockboxes are relatively cheap. Simple versions that can attach to the underside of a car seat with a cable can be found for about $40, and some cities have even begun developing programs to give them away. In Houston, where more than 4,400 guns were stolen from cars last year, the police have given away roughly 700 such boxes this year, according to Houston Police Sgt. Tracy Hicks, and have plans to give away 6,300 more.

Some skeptics doubt even widespread use of the boxes would make much of a dent in 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 the 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 increased nearly tenfold over the last decade, to a record 1,378 in 2022 from 152 in 2012, according to police data. The city’s rate of gun thefts from cars was the 15th highest in the country in 2020, based on FBI figures. The situation was even worse in Memphis, Tennessee’s second-largest city, which had the highest rate of gun thefts from cars in the nation that year, according to the Everytown analysis.

It is difficult 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 where guns used in crime come from,” Mr. Heyne said.

Tennessee’s Republican-dominated state legislature is considering a pair of bills with bipartisan support that would explicitly outlaw leaving a firearm in a motor vehicle or boat unless it is “locked within the trunk, utility or glove box, or a locked container securely affixed.”

The only allowable punishment, under the bill, would be enrollment in a court-approved firearm safety course. It is a purposely mild approach engineered to help create buy-in, rather than another culture-war battle, said Representative Caleb Hemmer, a Nashville-area Democrat who sponsored the House bill.

“We’re likening it to a speeding ticket,” Mr. Hemmer said. “We know we’re in a conservative state, and we’re trying to convince people to be responsible gun owners.”

Mr. Hemmer believes there is a relationship between the spike in the number of guns stolen from cars in Nashville and the loosening of state gun laws, including a 2021 permitless carry law.

Mr. Hemmer’s bill is supported by John C. Drake, the Nashville Police chief, who on Tuesday wrote a letter to legislative leaders in which he mentioned that the high-profile robbery and killing of a local country musician, Kyle Yorlets, in 2019 was carried out by youths using a pistol stolen from a vehicle.

“With gun ownership comes serious responsibility on several fronts, including securing guns, particularly in motor vehicles, so that they do not come into the hands of thieves/violent criminals,” Mr. Drake wrote.

The Tennessee lockbox legislation is already generating controversy, an indication of how steadfastly gun-rights advocates oppose nearly any laws that might restrict gun owners.

The legislation is opposed by the N.R.A. Amy Hunter, an N.R.A. spokeswoman, called Mr. Hemmer’s bill “feckless” in a statement and said it would discourage theft victims from reporting the stolen guns to the police.

“This law can only be enforced if someone’s gun is stolen, the victim then reports the theft and admits the gun was unsecured — at which point the theft victim is charged with a crime,” she said.

In Chapel Hill, Tenn., a small town about 50 miles south of Nashville, David Henley, 51, the owner of the gun store Tennessee Armory and Outdoor Supply, had a similar view.

It would be better, he said, to increase penalties for the thieves. “If you’re at your house and a package is sitting on your porch, and a criminal comes and steals it, it’s the same thing,” he said. “Who’s the criminal?”

Representative John Gillespie, a Memphis Republican who co-sponsored Mr. Hemmer’s bill, was frustrated by such arguments. “I’m more than willing to increase the penalties for people stealing a gun,” he said. “But are we really that burdened by asking someone to properly lock up their gun in a vehicle so it can’t be stolen?”

Laws mandating that guns in cars be locked away are already on the books in some states, including California, Oregon, New York and New Jersey.

A number of similarly themed bills are under consideration in other states including Hawaii and Florida. A Virginia bill, introduced by a Democratic senator in that state’s Republican-controlled upper chamber, did not survive the 2023 legislative session, which ended in late February.

Cities are also taking action. In January, the Atlanta City Council passed an ordinance seeking to create a lockbox giveaway program. In New Orleans, Tulane University’s Violence Prevention Institute has begun giving away gun boxes with biometric thumbprint locks at a local hospital.

“The hard thing is, when you talk to people about why they carry guns in cars, it’s about safety and protection. And when you talk about lockboxes, 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 have recently begun actively enforcing a five-year-old law that mandates that guns be stored in locked containers. Nick Dunne, a spokesman for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, noted that judges are giving people the opportunity to have their cases dismissed if they show the court that they have purchased a lockbox.

Mr. Dunne said that of 192 citations written last year, roughly three-quarters of them were issued to people who did not live in St. Louis — an indication of how the political and cultural differences between cities and rural and suburban areas help fuel the problem.

Houston Police Sgt. Hicks says that part of his job involves trying to get the word out to people who come in town for big sporting events.

Sgt. Hicks said that it is not just out of town visitors who are targeted by gun thieves, although he said that they know to look for clues that suggest a gun is more likely to be in a car.

“You’ve got 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 broken into?”

You make a very solid case against people who keep a handgun in their car. My son is a federal agent and always keeps his personal weapon on him at all times. He has a gun safe in his Suburban bolted to the floor under his seat. If he can't carry it on him it is secured in the safe with a fingerprint release lock. He can have access to it in 5 seconds if need be. If someone breaks into his vehicle they will not be able to steal his weapon. Leaving an unsecured weapon in your vehicle is not something a responsible gun owner should ever do. That being said I don't believe the vast majority of illegal weapons make their way into circulation in that manner. The vast majority of illegal handguns come from very sophisticated gun runners who know their prospective clients will pay top dollar to get their hands on their merchandise. You can get of jail at 10 am and have a Glock in your hands by 5 pm. No need for any background checks or pesky waiting for a concealed carry permit that kind of nonsense is only for people who obey and respect the law.