NEW ORLEANS — It's not at all uncommon for guns stolen from New Orleans to turn up in a criminal investigation in New Orleans.
In 2022, law enforcement seized about 1600 guns in New Orleans. About 1100 of them were stolen from vehicles.
And as of the end of May, NOPD says 68% of stolen firearms reported in New Orleans in 2023 were taken in vehicle burglaries.
We’re still awaiting that data for Jefferson Parish.
While some of these guns are sold or transported out of state, most guns stolen from the streets of New Orleans are used in crimes or recovered here.
Between 2017 and 2021, the ATF tracked more than 9,000 guns recovered during crimes committed in New Orleans. Most of them - about 5,500 - were stolen within Louisiana.
More than 1,100 were stolen from Metairie alone.
The ATF also took a statewide look at the data for just the year 2021. That year, more than 13,800 firearms were recovered and traced in Louisiana during investigations.
More than 9-thousand of those were stolen within Louisiana.
Because of this huge number of guns being stolen and used on the streets of New Orleans, the ATF formed a dedicated gun crime task unit.
The bottom line: the fewer unsecured guns left in cars in New Orleans, the fewer guns flooding the streets.
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