Throughout the nation, there’s a push for a number of gun laws. One popular with anti-gunners and those who understand little about personal defense are so-called “safe storage” laws. These laws require firearms to be locked up when not in use. The idea is to prevent them from being stolen or misused by children who shouldn’t have access to them anyway.

These laws are popular in many places, and there’s a reason for that.

It’s because some of our fellow gun owners do stuff like this:

In Springfield, a thief breaking into a car was caught on camera. The man hit a house just off East Sunshine, behind the old Ruby’s Market.

The homeowner caught the whole thing on his surveillance system. Now, the homeowner says the guy has his two pistols, among other items.

“I called out to my wife and asked did you leave the garage door open? Well, of course not, ya know… so now we’re thinking maybe the leaves had blown in and it didn’t shut all the way and stupid us didn’t check to see if it closed all the way,” explained [Name removed for reasons to become clear]. He didn’t double check, but a thief did. A man rode by on his bike, saw a crime of opportunity, and took it.

[The owner] says he took two pistols and an I-pad.

Springfield police tell us gun thefts from cars are rapidly increasing.

The original story shows the numbers, which may not be all that high considering the size of Springfield, Missouri, but here’s the thing to remember: each stolen gun represents a gun that has gone straight into criminal hands.

Look, there are times when you’re going to leave a gun in the car. I’ve had to do it and so have you, most likely. You’re carrying, and you have to go into a gun free zone. Being a law-abiding citizen, you disarm before going into the school to pick your sick kid up, or before going into the courthouse to take care of some business. You leave the gun in your vehicle because it’s the only real option you have.

I get it.

But this isn’t the case here. I removed the victim’s name because I’m using his situation as an example, but I don’t want to pick on the guy.

What happened is that he left multiple guns in the car overnight, only to have them get stolen, thus placing them in criminal hands. It doesn’t take much for something like this to spiral into a safe storage law bill or something similar, all in what will be described as an effort to “protect the public from armed criminals.”

Further, it makes it a whole lot harder to talk about responsible gun owners when the anti-gunners can point to situations like this and just smirk. Don’t think they’re somehow above that sort of thing. Trust me; they’re not.

While I don’t support these laws, I do think that it behooves us to be responsible with our firearms. Are you leaving yours in your car overnight? Probably not the most responsible thing you can do.

Enough of that kind of thing and safe storage laws are the result.