The first question on many minds when a gun crime occurs is: Where did the suspect get the gun? In Jacksonville, police reports suggest, the answer many times is unlocked vehicles.

Statistics provided by the Sheriff’s Office show that 1,000 firearms were stolen from unsecured vehicles in the last two years — an average of more than a gun a day. In 2015, the city ranked second only to Atlanta for guns stolen from cars with 563, according to The Trace, a nonprofit news outlet focused on gun violence.

Getting those guns off the streets remains key to the Sheriff’s Office’s mission of cracking down on gun violence in Jacksonville. But Sheriff Mike Williams says police can’t do it alone, and he’s reminding gun owners to help out by locking their vehicles and bringing guns inside.

"Not only are you creating an issue for an officer who has to come and write a report because you left your car unlocked, but you may have contributed to violent crime in our community," Williams said.

"The person who stole that gun is going to sell it, trade it or get rid of it, and it will be a crime gun in this community or some other community," he added.

That was part of the message the sheriff, joined by a dozen subordinates, shared with residents as he walked from door to door last week in the Brookwood subdivision near Nocatee.

"Criminals will go down the path of least resistance," said Williams. "So the place where there’s no lights, no alarms, cars are unlocked, that’s where they go."

The criminal tendency to hit easy targets surfaces repeatedly in police reports, as well as various surveillance video clips posted to the Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page in recent years.

Take, for example, a video from Nov. 7, 2015. A man can be seen approaching a Toyota sport utility vehicle parked in the driveway of an Arlington-area home, gently lifting the door handle and climbing inside. He and another suspect rifle through the interior, remove a handgun and other items, then slink away.

Nearly 400 auto burglaries were reported citywide in the last month, including roughly 30 cases in which weapons were stolen, according to data compiled by the Sheriff’s Office. It’s unclear how many of those reports involved unlocked vehicles.

About 7 p.m. Feb. 15, an Orange Park man reported someone stole his .40-caliber Smith & Wesson, loaded with hollow-point ammunition, from the glovebox of his Acura while it was parked outside a business on Lake Gray Boulevard in southwest Jacksonville, according to an incident report. He said he’d forgotten to lock the car while he went inside.

While an officer was taking that report, another one was handling a similar call about 10 miles away at a home on South Timber Creek Court off Normandy Boulevard. In that case, the victim said his loaded .40-caliber Springfield handgun and an extended magazine with another dozen rounds was missing from his Honda. He said his son may have left the car unlocked, the report said.

No neighborhood is immune.

At a glance, a crime-mapping tool that relies on the Sheriff’s Office’s data shows the auto burglaries reported in the last month played out all across the city. In Riverside, the tool shows more than 60 auto burglaries reported within a half-mile radius of the popular King Street corridor in the last six months. It doesn’t indicate how many involved unlocked vehicles.

Williams noted some break-ins involved broken windows and shattered glass, and those cases aren’t necessarily preventable. But he said the ones involving unsecured vehicles can usually be thwarted by simply locking vehicles and bringing guns inside.

"And that’s not an anti-gun message," said Williams. "It’s a responsible gun ownership message. We’re going to continue to pound that message home until we get some better results."

Garrett Pelican: (904) 359-4385