We’ve long argued here that violent crime isn’t fueled by law-abiding gun owners, lawful gun sales, or your local gun store. Instead, it’s fueled by black-market deals and stolen guns.

Yet over the last year, it’s been harder to get people to listen to reason. They’ve seen an increase in gun sales reported in the media and they see an increase in violence. In their mind, that’s just putting two and two together and getting four.

The problem is that they’re getting an incomplete picture, at best. For one, criminals already had guns before law-abiding citizens purchased guns themselves.

For another, there’s also an increase in gun thefts.

The number of weapons stolen so far this year in the city of Atlanta is alarming.

The Atlanta Police Department says 705 firearms have been reported stolen — a lot of those taken out of cars.

The city council public safety panel this week received a briefing on crime.

…

Add to these cases, police say too many of what you might call common lawbreakers are easily getting their hands on guns taken from the vehicles of gun owners.

This is apparently a near record-setting pace, and don’t delude yourself into thinking Atlanta is alone on this.

Yes, lock your cars if you leave your gun in there. Also, don’t leave your gun in your car unless you have no choice or you have an actual vehicle gun safe.

However, let’s also understand that these are the victims of crimes, not the causes of any crime. No one asks to be robbed, so we need to stop treating these victims like the disease.

The disease are those who would steal guns in the first place. They steal them and then either use them or sell them to those who would use them, thus fueling the surge in violent crime.

It’s not that people are buying more guns, it’s that more people are having guns stolen. Again, it’s criminal behavior behind the criminal behavior. That shouldn’t be a controversial position, yet it seems to be. Far too few want to acknowledge that criminals are, well, criminals. They’re not going to obey new laws any more than they obey the current ones.

That includes gun control.

If people can start understanding that it’s not just violent crime going up, but also the theft of lawfully owned firearms, then maybe they’ll start to see reality. Criminals break the law as a matter of course. It’s what they do, and that’s not likely to change, so stop blaming the good guys for what the criminals do.

The problem with a surge in violent crime has nothing at all to do with lawful gun purchases. It has to do with criminal behavior from start to finish. Once we get this through some rather thick skulls, then maybe we can begin to address the problem from a standpoint of focusing on the bad actors than the law-abiding citizens.

Yes, I know the good guys are less likely to put up a fight, but that only holds true for so long.

Plus, it’ll never address the issue.

Not that I think some people actually want to, mind you, but if people are dying because of this kind of thing, maybe it’s time to put the BS aside and actually do something about these criminals. Just a thought.