Bloomberg is using ATF reports on gun store burglaries to call for more gun control for licensed firearm dealers.

Such controls have been pushed in California, where they would serve to drive neighborhood, mom & pop gun stores out of business. In a word, the expensive security measures would allow only those with the deepest pockets, and/or the largest conglomeration backing, to survive.

Bloomberg quotes ATF numbers to show that gun store burglaries across the U.S. went from 3,355 in 2013 to 7,841 in 2017. They point out that gun-friendly Texas had the largest number of guns burglarized at 769, after which the highest number for any other state was 456.

Equally gun-friendly Georgia came in at 427 guns burglarized last year, but that number was down considerably from 1,069 gun burglarized in Georgia in 2016. This shows a lot of fluctuation and may indicate that the overall number of burglaries have an ebb and flow which escapes the untrained eye.

Breitbart News has reported gun store burglaries on numerous occasions and, as with high profile firearm attacks, it is clear that the burglaries would not be easily deterred. For example, it is not uncommon to see “smash and grab” robberies where suspects in large vehicles drive to glass or walls to get to firearms:

Nevertheless, Bloomberg asked Gabby Giffords’ gun control group what they thought and policy advisor David Chipman said:

When states require gun dealers to take responsible steps to prevent their stores from being burglarized—by properly securing not only their stores, but the firearms themselves—they eliminate the risk of thieves taking off with weapons. We know how to solve this problem, but we need more states to acknowledge this issue and put best practices for reducing gun store theft into action.

Once the onus for gun store robberies is shifted from the perpetrator to the gun store owner–and the owner required to spend more and more money on various, expensive security measures–it is only a matter of time until mom & pop gun stores across the U.S. find they can not longer afford to be in the gun business.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.