MACON, Ga. — After a string of youth violence in Houston County, a police department said many young people get their hands on guns through car break-ins.
In Savannah, city leaders passed a new ordinance this month that requires you to lock your car if you have a gun stored in there. It may seem like common sense, but gun theft is a big problem across the country.
The FBI reports on average, at least one gun is stolen from a car every 15 minutes.
Hamp Dowling is the owner of Eagle Gun Range in Macon. He said gun storage safety is something they ask all their customers about.
"Every sale we make, we say how are you gonna protect this? How are you gonna keep it safe? Do you have a good storage lock or do you have a good safe to put it in?" he said.
Some of the safes they sell, have holes on the bottom that could be bolted to a wall, so it's not easily removable.
But if you store your gun in a car, Dowling recommends a more compact one that comes with a wire to tie around a car seat, to make it harder for someone to steal.
"Make 'em have to work for it. If they gonna, gonna steal it from ya, make 'em work for it, which takes time. Which hopefully your alarm is going off in your car, and they don't take the time to break these wires or whatever to get into it," Dowling said.
Ronald Brainard with the Houston County Sheriff's Office said gun thefts from cars are a serious problem.
"Obviously thieves like quiet times, and they'll come, they'll start at one end of a neighborhood and they'll work the entire neighborhood over a half-hour period of time," Brainard said.
He said they're often organized groups going around, checking every single car door. And if it's a minor stealing the gun, it's hard to ever find it again.
"A juvenile can't go into a pawn shop and pawn a piece of property like that. So one of the issues that we have as law enforcement is it's hard to track a gun when it stays kind of underground," Brainard said.
The biggest takeaway he said is, don't leave your guns in your car overnight, and if you have absolutely have to, keep it in a safe, and double-check the car door is locked.