I think most of us have nightmares about our guns being stolen. The idea of not just hundreds of dollars in property being taken from us, but also the possibility of our gun being used to hurt someone else bothers many of us. No one wants to be the victim of a crime like this.

A video from New Orleans shows it happening.

The media report on the theft:

Surveillance video caught a man stealing a gun from inside an unlocked vehicle in the Little Woods area of New Orleans East early Sunday (Jan. 28), according to the NOPD. About 2 a.m. Sunday, the unidentified man entered the victim’s vehicle in the 7200 block of Wayside Drive and stole a 38-caliber revolver before leaving the scene. The gun, a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver, has three distinct scratches on its barrel, police said. In the video released Tuesday, the suspected burglar appears toward the beginning of the clip, in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. He can be seen walking along a sidewalk opposite the driveway where the break-in occurred, stopping near a vehicle, before eventually crossing the street. The break-in occurs about 45 seconds into the video. Nearly a minute later, at the 1:35 mark, the man can be seen getting out of the vehicle, holding what appears to be the stolen gun.

It took less than a minute for the criminal to open the unlocked door, steal a firearm, and leave. That’s it.

I feel bad for the gun owner, but I’m also trying to figure out just how this kind of thing happens. How do you not lock your car up when you keep a firearm in the vehicle? How?

Personally, I’m not a fan of having a firearm that you leave in the vehicle as a general rule. I think it’s much better to have the gun on your person, simply because not everything happens when you’re near your vehicle. However, I also know that’s just my opinion and some people have other schools of thought on the subject.

Maybe we can all agree that if you’re doing to have a dedicated vehicle gun then you should keep the freaking doors locked.

We can see in the video that the crook doesn’t start at that car. He starts across the street, looking for unlocked cars. This isn’t a master criminal, for crying out loud, just an opportunist with no morals. By leaving the vehicle unlocked, the owner gave this guy the score of the night.

Don’t do this. Don’t perpetuate this particular brand of dumb.

I’m sure the owner feels horrible, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear that he or she normally kept the doors locked but, for some reason, they weren’t this night. Stuff happens, after all. I’ve gone out in the morning to find the car doors unlocked despite knowing I’d locked them the night before. I get it.

That’s why I’m classifying this as “dumb” rather than “stupid.” It’s a subtle distinction based on severity, so it’s different.

Of course, I also never kept a firearm in my car without making absolutely positive the door was locked, so my sympathy can only go so far. Here’s hoping the police find this guy soon and recover the firearm before anyone gets hurt.