Travelling With Guns: A Cautionary Tale

Well kids, last week my pal Don and I drove to Wannamaker’s Tulsa Gun Show in Tulsa, OK. World’s largest gun show. Five miles of tables and 70,000 attendees. Show was amazing. What was not so amazing, was our truck was broken into the night before the show in a nice hotel’s parking lot by thieves preying on trucks with out of state license plates in town for the show.

I of course blame my Adventure Wife for all of this. Before I left for the show, I showed her a metal pistol safe with aircraft cable I was taking along. She said “Oh a cable that can just be cut by bolt cutters. Good luck.”  It is obvious now looking back on it- she used her seventh level she-witch powers to summon denizens to attack our truck. Obvious. Don’t believe me? Her people had some famous legal troubles back in Salem, Mass about 700 years ago. Don’t test her. Even I, with long exposure, have only limited immunity.

The story unravels like this:

We parked at the hotel about 10 PM and all of the good spots in front of the hotel lobby were taken, so we had to park on the end. Still well lit, with cameras on the hotel corners and the neighborhood was called the medical district- all medical offices and hospitals and no residences near bay and absolutely no foot traffic. It was a high end hotel.

In the truck, we left two empty pistol safes under the front seats, metal boxes about the size of hardback books secured by aircraft cables around the seat post. Very handy for transporting unloaded pistols in transit, or if concealed carrying and there are business areas where you can’t take a gun. The glove box and console were luckily unlocked.  In the bed of the truck was an empty gun cabinet (you know those light gauge metal “safes” about the size and weight of a filing cabinet) secured by clamps, large padlocks and larger cables in case we were going to transport items. The box of the truck was covered with a flat metal slat roll up cover and tailgate locked. There was no way to see into the box or know there was a gun cabinet in there.  We left no luggage, guns or computers in the truck.

Well about 8AM the next morning, I came out and opened the driver’s side rear door and noticed an awful lot of light coming in through the passenger side rear window…and shattered glass all across the backseat and floor. The burglars cut off the padlocks and cables securing the empty pistol boxes and took them. I found the keys to one box on the pavement. Good luck with that empty open box fellas. They also had worked the releases to get under and behind the back seats to access some hidden cubby holes I did not know were there. These guys were quite good at this. If they had broken out the back window an alarm would have gone off. They had the tools, experience and nerve to thoroughly wipe out a truck parked underneath hotel cameras.

Walking around to the other side of the vehicle I found the mutts had also taken the time and effort to pry open one side of the metal slat box cover and peel it completely over to the opposite side where it was left hanging off the right side of the truck. This was quite a feat. I imagine they wanted in after getting the two pistol safes from the cab- and they were rewarded with the sight of the gun cabinet. Oh how their criminal hearts must have leaped-such treasure! It took them a lot of time and effort to pry the topper off and cut the cabinet loose-and had to have a truck available to haul it away. Won’t fit in a Kia sedan. I figured three to four young guys on the job with one (probably the youngest and skinniest worming his way in through the passenger side window.) 

Next we met another break in victim in the lot. His truck with out of state plates was parked directly under a hotel camera. Again, he had no guns and wasn’t even in town for the gun show. He lost about $500 worth of contractor grade tools and said there were other trucks in the lot that got hit but they left.  We notified the hotel to call the police and the desk clerk came out to tsk-tsk over the scene. The hotel of course takes no responsibility for the loss and does not monitor the multi screen cameras behind the desk. 

I squared off with the desk clerk woman and said “You know. You and the other desk clerk from yesterday are the only people in town who knew we were here for the gun show.”  (My friend at check in had honestly answered when they asked what we were doing in town- next time we will advise we are in for the infectious disease clinic.)  The clerk was not forthcoming, so I pressed on. “Do you have a record?” and she said “Uh, a record? What kind of record?” so I added “Oh, so you do.” She stared at your old Uncle Mike a bit at that and I said “You know a criminal record. You’ve been in jail right?” She then admitted “Well yeah.”  Being all cordial I then related “You know it’s not too late to make this right, before the cops get here.” She stared some more.  “If you want to tell us who you talked to it won’t go so bad. If you don’t I am pointing the cops straight at you.”  She really did not like your Uncle Mike after that.

A squad with two officers arrived, and did not seem to want to even get out of their car. They advised they had just been over to the Holiday Inn where about 20 out of state trucks had been burgled- all looking for guns, and the parking lot over there was a sea of shattered glass. I did not pursue the desk clerk angle any more after that. The police in fact said last year a guy lost 20 guns parked at a Tulsa hotel in for the twice a year gun show. The police were pleasant enough but did not do…well anything. They did not interview us, did not take a report, did no crime scene work- no photos, no dusting for obvious prints, no nothing. They said they were sorry and wished they could catch these thieves because the guns would go immediately into the streets. They were even reluctant to make a report. Said they had a lot of reports to type up already from the Holiday Inn, and we could just file the report online with Tulsa PD. I got the hint.

One of the policemen helped us get the topper loose and then stuffed into the bottom of the box. Don got a pair of vise grips and got it loose and the other truck victim gave us some duct tape and plastic to cover the window and two tie downs. A nice thing about travelling with a farmer-some pliers and duct tape and you are back on the road!

We went over to the show, which had to be the absolutely safest parking lot in America. I told Don if someone yells help in that parking lot just duck as there would be inbound rounds momentarily. Inside the show we found our story got worse. Turns out people there have known about these targeted gun parking lot thefts going on in Tulsa for multiple years. A couple even offered to discount prices for Don for his trouble!

When I was a young federal agent the new guys always caught the car burglary and tool theft cases no one else wanted. I worked a lot of break ins and resolved few. But to find out thieves have been targeting this gun show’s patrons for several years really ticked me off. The show is only two weekends a year and the thieves are professional and prolific-why isn’t somebody doing something about it?  If we had circumstances like this at my job back in the day me and the boys would stay up all night and have some big fun laying hands on miscreants like this! You could even incorporate some technology to help out. Seems pretty easy to me. It’s what we call pro-active.

We checked the Tulsa news the next two days to see if they had a final tally. Not a peep. But Channel 6 TV’s website had a tipline- “Got a news story for us?” Turns out I did, and you know me, I can string a few words together in a tantalizing way.

I even wrote a letter to the owners of the gun show, telling them about this apparent ongoing targeting and maybe they should warn their patrons and seeing how they bring in 70,000 patrons and tons of $$$ it would be worth talking to the Mayor or the Chief of Police. Imagine my surprise when Mr Wannamaker responded back to me telling me Tulsa had been going down hill the past couple of years and his own house there had been broken into twice in the last four years. Referencing contacting the Mayor/Chief of Police he said “I wish I had thought of that! I’ll do it!”

Then imagine my surprise when I was contacted by Channel 6 TV reporter Cal Day later in the week. We talked about the problem and our personal loss-with Don’s damage estimates now up above $8,000. Cal interviewed me via a live video call and said he was sorry about our loss. He related they did get the police to admit it was a big problem.  I was quite gratified by stirring some shi# I had brought light to this problem. 

Then it got better. Today I went online and watched the lead story on the 6 o’clock news from Tulsa all about out of town trucks being targeted by thieves. They interviewed the police who now look like they are doing something, and they allowed TV 6 to run high def video clips of the mutts inside a couple of trucks and a real nice picture of Don’s damaged truck I’d sent in. The police said they were working it and hoped someone in the community would recognize these turds. Imagine! I used the media to get the police to go all in!  Oh, and they had my video interview as well. Not star quality, but I did get some good stuff in like how I always appreciated Organized Crime vs Disorganized Crime and professionalism in your chosen craft. I did not mention the Tulsa King Dwight Manfretti by name.

Don and I got to talk about the whole story driving 10 hours back to Illinois with plastic flapping over the back window. We agreed we had done nothing wrong, could not have done anything different except maybe a better parking spot in front of the lobby and  we did many things right on that trip, best of all was not leaving any valuables in the truck overnight or thinking a nice vehicle at a nice hotel was “safe.” It is odd to have to consider being robbed like this- but it does happen.

When you are tired and just off the road bring your situational awareness up. You are not safe yet. Put the effort in to emptying out your vehicle and don’t put it off  until “Later.”  I have been guilty of this many times while on long trips for shooting competitions. I don’t like parading gun bags in through the lobby but am real diligent about it the first couple of nights. By the third night it generally gets chitted off to “Ahhh, nothing’s gonna happen here.” Well it can. 

Don’t know if we are going back to the Tulsa show. Certainly won’t be staying in Tulsa if we do. We have discussed different vehicles with a trunk and having vigilantes taking turns on watch in the vehicle (would not need two rooms then just one!). I have also been looking on line about getting some of those tile tracker chips-seem like a nifty and inexpensive thing to take travelling with you…and does anybody know where I can get in touch with that Chevy dealership that has the Trunk Monkey? I think we could reach an adequate financial deal to rent a Trunk Monkey for the weekend.