Burglars smash hole to indoor gun range; grab rifles, pistols

SOUTH HOUSTON, Texas — Burglars drove a pickup Thursday into the side of a concrete-block building that houses a shooting range, taking an unidentified number of rifles and pistols, police said.

The smash-and-grab theft happened around 4 a.m. CT at Marksman Indoor Range. Two men were in the pickup and were in and out within 5 minutes, South Houston police said.

The gun range's alarm service did not notify the police department immediately, Capt. Eddie Martin told the Houston Chronicle. But officers arrived within 7 minutes of the entry, and the burglars already were gone.

Stolen guns can be resold quickly and often are hard to trace, officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told the paper. Texas leads the nation in thefts from licensed gun dealers, and Houston, where a Chronicle analysis has revealed that at least 32,000 guns have been stolen from Houston-area homes and businesses in eight years with only a 7% recovery rate, has a thriving black market for stolen guns.

Managers at Marksman Range have not said what specific weapons were taken, and investigators are still going through surveillance video for clues.

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