Those FBI records also appear to be an undercount.
That total could include surplus weapons the military sells to the public or loans to civilian law enforcement. military were used in a felony during the 2010s. The closest AP could find to an independent tally was done by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services. The Pentagon does not track crime guns, and spokesman Kirby said his office was unaware of any stolen firearms used in civilian crimes. The military requires itself to inform civilian law enforcement when a gun is unaccounted for, and the services help in subsequent investigations. Federal restrictions on sharing firearms information publicly mean the case total is certainly an undercount. The AP identified eight instances in which five different stolen military firearms were used in a civilian shooting or other violent crime, and others in which felons were caught possessing weapons. Stolen military guns have been sold to street gang members, recovered on felons and used in violent crimes. That hasn’t happened since at least 2017. In the absence of a regular reporting requirement, the Pentagon is responsible for informing Congress of any “significant” incidents of missing weapons. But as long as there have been armories, people have been stealing from them. Sight counts, a visual total of weapons on hand, are drilled into troops whether they are in the field, on patrol, or in the arms room. Armorers are supposed to check weapons when they open each day. Weapons accountability is part of military routine. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t mistakes made.” That doesn’t mean that there aren’t losses. “We take this very seriously and we think we do a very good job. “We have a very large inventory of several million of these weapons,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in an interview. The officials also said missing weapons are not a widespread problem. Like Miller, top officials within the Marines and Secretary of Defense’s office said weapon accountability is a high priority - and when the military knows a weapon is missing, it does trigger a concerted response to recover it. Army officials later said the total is imperfect because it includes some recovered guns and may include some duplicates. In a second interview, Miller said he hadn’t been aware of the memos, which had been distributed throughout the Army, until AP pointed them out. An internal Army analysis that AP obtained tallied 1,303 firearms. During an initial interview, Miller significantly understated the extent to which weapons disappear, citing records that report only a few hundred missing rifles and handguns. Theft or loss happens more often than the Army has publicly acknowledged. “It’s about the money, right?” said Brig. Often from the lower ranks, they may see a chance to make a buck from a military that can afford it.
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They know how to exploit weak points within armories or the military’s enormous supply chains. Military weapons are especially vulnerable to corrupt insiders responsible for securing them.
Unlike the other branches, the Air Force has released no data at all. For years, the Army suppressed the release of information. In its accounting, whenever possible AP eliminated cases in which firearms were lost in combat, during accidents such as aircraft crashes and similar incidents where a weapon’s fate was known.įrom the start of this reporting 10 years ago, armed services have been reluctant to share information. On Tuesday, in the wake of the AP investigation, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee she would be open to new oversight over weapons accountability.įor this reporting, the AP built its own database by reviewing records including hundreds of military criminal case files and data from registries of small arms, as well as internal military analysis. The Army and the Air Force couldn’t readily tell AP how many weapons were lost or stolen from 2010 through 2019. The Pentagon used to share annual updates about stolen weapons with Congress, but that requirement ended years ago and public accountability has slipped. In that incident and many others, military investigators closed the case without finding the person responsible. While AP’s focus was firearms, military explosives also have been lost or stolen, including armor-piercing grenades that ended up in an Atlanta backyard.
The war zone theft went undetected for weeks, when empty pistol boxes were discovered in the compound. In Afghanistan, someone cut the padlock on an Army container and stole 65 Beretta M9s - the same type of gun recovered in New York. Weapon theft or loss spanned the military’s global footprint. Another stolen Army pistol was used in a Boston street robbery. In one case, authorities linked an Army pistol stolen from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to four shootings in New York before it was recovered.
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