The latest numbers show 430 guns were stolen from unlocked cars in Jacksonville in 2018.
JSO makes an effort from television to social media ads nearly daily as a reminder to lock up your valuables.
“These guns are ending up out on the streets," firearms instructor Jeff Nolan said. "Look at last week and the violence, how many of those guns, they didn’t recover, how many of those are stolen, you’ve got to wonder about that."
If you leave your gun at home and fail to use a safe or lockbox and someone gets a hold of it you could face a misdemeanor for failing to secure your firearm. But if it’s left in your car, you’re considered the victim of a burglary and don’t face a penalty.
Sheriff Mike Williams said he would not entertain the idea of fines for gun owners who leave their guns in unlocked cars.
“That’s a tricky situation, I mean you want people to report those guns stolen and if you started obviously fining or ticketing people who left a gun in a car, they’re just not going to report it," Williams said.
“The best bet there is to make sure that people are responsible gun owners and lock those guns up in their cars.”
“They don’t belong in a vehicle period," Nolan said. "The idea behind concealed carry is to have it on your person, not to leave it in your vehicle locked or unlocked."
Jeff Nolan has been in law enforcement over three decades and an instructor training people to be responsible gun owners but said if they’re not they should pay.
“Maybe somebody needs to pull these reports and send them to the Department of Agriculture and say we need to revoke his or her license, because how is that a responsible person if we lose it.”
While Nolan agrees fines would not be effective, he said if the state removed a gun owner’s permit if they leave their gun in a car, that would be effective in his mind.
“You need to take the license and tell them they have to go back through some type of course, a basic pistol course, but they can’t have it until they show that.”
That way, Nolan says, if police stop that owner and they are armed without taking another course, they’d then face jail time.
“They broke the law and they are going to end up in Duval County Jail.“
Of course you’d never want you gun used against an innocent victim in the commission of your crime, so Nolan suggests to lock your car, but take your gun out of your car and keep it in a secured location.