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A California NBC affiliate recently reported that eight police agencies have lost more than 500 firearms since 2010, revealing that guns were stolen from the homes or vehicles belonging to Bay Area police, and some guns were “simply unaccounted for.”
This happened while lawmakers in Sacramento were looking at more new gun control laws aimed at law-abiding citizens.
According to KSBW, the federal Bureau of Land Management was one agency that did not respond to an open records request submitted in July of last year. It was a BLM ranger’s gun that was later allegedly used in the death of Kate Steinle on San Francisco’s Pier 14. An illegal alien named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez has been charged with murder. He has been deported several times in the past.
The station reported that six law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area could not account for some 379 firearms that have gone missing in the past six years. The guns include AR-15 and M-16 type rifles, tactical rifles, shotguns, “hundreds of handguns” and a gas grenade launcher.
The Oakland Police Department refused to release records to the station, according to the report. The OPD claimed that those records are exempt from California’s Public Records Act because of on-going investigations. Other agencies with similar cases did comply with the request, however.
One police official in San Jose acknowledged that some 300 guns were missing and he called that “totally unacceptable.” Only a few of those missing firearms have been recovered, and a majority of the lost guns were handguns. There were, however, six “sniper rifles,” two M-16 rifles, ten 40mm launchers and 49 shotguns, the story said.
Even more alarming was the revelation that one gun was stolen from the personal vehicle of UC Berkeley Police Chief Margo Bennett, along with her badge. This happened while she was apparently jogging.
The investigation also uncovered “dozens of other firearms” had been stolen from vehicles and homes of Bay Area police, including ten from San Francisco cops and six from Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies.
Still, the gun prohibition lobby is working hard to convince people that “universal background checks” on all private firearms transactions and “transfers” will keep guns out of the wrong hands. They are busy in Nevada trying to pass an initiative similar to one that was passed in Washington two years ago, with funding coming from various wealthy anti-gunners including Michael Bloomberg’s Every town for Gun Safety.
