Migrant gangs in Colorado have robbed eight gun stores using children between the ages of 12 and 17 to commit the crimes, but some of the attacks have not gone as planned thanks to proactive measures put in place by shop owners.
In the latest robberies in Colorado Springs the young thieves stole cars and rammed them into the gun store buildings in hopes of entering the stores to steal guns off the store’s shelves.
In one incident on August 8, the thieves made away with 13 guns and left almost $65,000 in damage after slamming into the store with a stolen car.
“They rammed through the wall, climbed over the hood of the car and ran in the store,” Steven Kinder, the general manager at Spartan Defense and Training, told KDVR-TV.
Between July and August, four gun stores in and around the extended Denver area suffered similar smash-and-grab incidents and in every case where police ended up with suspects, the perpetrators were minors.
In the case of Spartan Defense and Training, the thieves made away with a few AK-47s and Glock pistols, as well as some ammo.
But the Spartan robbery was only the first committed by the same crew that night. The same group of boys using the same stolen car tried to smash into DCF Guns in Colorado Springs. But they were unable to gain entrance into the store because its owners erected a double entrance door system as a security measure and the car only breached the first entrance.
This method of breaking into gun stores has been deployed in at least eight robbery attempts of gun stores in the area this year.
Fortunately, in many cases, the thieves have not been able to steal too many guns because shop owners have conferred among themselves and began encouraging each other to put most of their firearms in large gun safes each night instead of leaving them on store shelves overnight.
This process of locking the guns up in safes every night has kept the number of stolen guns to a much smaller number than may otherwise have been.
A troubling aspect of these smash-and-grabs is the ages of the crooks. Police are often finding them to be minors.
“From what the police have told us so far, they’ve apprehended several of the individuals and the majority of them are under age 13 or 14 years old. One who was 18 years old was the one that basically ran from them, it looks to be gang-related at this point in time,” said Spartan owner Ted Collins.
The migrant gangs are recruiting these kids because they know the legal system is geared to give them only a few months in juvenile detention if caught and then, when they become 18, that juvenile record is expunged.
“They know that they can’t get the book thrown at them as hard as an adult can after 18 if it’s not that bad of a crime, they’re scot-free and able to basically re-up on their resume to do whatever they want for the gang,” added DCF associate Devin Perkins
The problem has grown exponentially during the Biden presidency as his failed border crisis grows. The crisis is compounded because nearby Denver officials and their sanctuary policies have become a beacon for migrant gangs.
Meanwhile, yet another Colorado Springs gun shop was hit on August 24, with the thieves using the same stolen car method to gain access to the store’s interior. Police said several guns were stolen, but did not release more specific information.
According to KKTV, the area has suffered nearly 30 incidents this year where cars driven by minors were used to smash into a business to steal merchandise.
“Every year it gets worse and worse. They’re putting small businesses out of business, basically. It’s hard to recover from big damages like this if you don’t have insurance,” said Timothy Arthur, owner of the Let’s Make a Deal Pawn and Gun shop which also suffered a smash-and-grab on Colorado Springs last month, KDRO-TV reported.
Arthur added that he is one of the shop owners who removes guns from the shelves and locks them up each night, so he did not lose any firearms during the robbery.
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