The damage to Roy Berg’s New Kensington gun shop is largely fixed, and authorities say they’ve arrested the men who broke in.

But the thing Berg wants most hasn’t happened yet — 22 of the guns stolen from RC Firearms on Jan. 22 remain missing and, Berg worries, may be in the wrong hands.

“We don’t want those guns on the street,” said Berg, who co-owns the gun shop with his son, Cole.

Unfortunately, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, that’s where many stolen guns end up.

So far, authorities say only two of the 24 guns stolen from RC Firearms have been found — in Homestead.

The pistols were found Jan. 24 when police stopped a car with four men inside. One of them had a gun from the RC burglary in his waistband. A second RC gun was found during a search of the car. Each of the other men had guns, police say, but none of those was stolen during the RC burglary.

Nationwide in 2022, the latest year for which full figures are available, 5,500 guns of various types were stolen from licensed firearms dealers, according to the ATF. Of those, about 4,000 were taken in burglaries, about 1,300 in larcenies, and just over 100 in robberies.

Most, about 3,600, were pistols.

In Pennsylvania that same year, 250 guns were stolen from gun shops, according to ATF data. Of those stolen guns, 162, about 65%, were taken in just 12 reported burglaries.

Over a five-year period, 2017 to 2021, the ATF says about 58% of the 701 firearms stolen from gun shops in Pennsylvania eventually were recovered.

The two most likely places for guns stolen in Pennsylvania to turn up are Baltimore and Philadelphia, according to the ATF.

In the RC firearms case, authorities say Michael Guin, 26, and Steyn Sarduy, 18, used a stolen pickup to ram through the gun shop’s front door. They smashed display cases, causing about $15,000 in damage.

In a criminal complaint, federal authorities said Sarduy made a full confession, including identifying Guin and saying Guin asked him to participate through text messages.

While knowing the suspects were in custody was a relief, Roy Berg said he’ll be more relieved when all of the guns are recovered. None of the guns taken from RC Firearms were recovered when Guin and Sarduy were arrested, ATF spokesman Alan Gilmore said.

While only two were recovered in the Homestead traffic stop, up from just one when first reported, the agency has leads on the rest.

“We hope to get some more,” Gilmore said. “Only time will tell how those leads pan out.”

Authorities knew the guns found in Homestead came from the New Kensington store because of their serial numbers.

If a member of law enforcement recovers a gun taken from RC Firearms, it will come up as stolen when its serial number is traced, Gilmore said.

While people may try to remove serial numbers from guns, Gilmore said that is less likely to happen in a theft and is more likely in straw purchase situations, where the person who buys a gun for another doesn’t want it traced back to themselves.

Removing a gun’s serial number is a crime.

Authorities have ways to read serial numbers that someone attempted to remove, Gilmore said.

“If obliterated beyond recognition, then those guns could be recovered and never known,” he said.

When guns are stolen, how many get recovered varies on a case-by-case basis, Gilmore said.

“People will typically keep some,” he said. “A lot of times, they try to get rid of them as quickly as they can.”

After about 100 were taken by a group of juveniles in a rash of burglaries in the Philadelphia area, more than half were recovered through a series of search warrants.

In that case, some of the juveniles still had the guns because they had not had a chance to move or hide them somewhere, Gilmore said. They were being found 10 to 20 at a time.

“Sometimes we get a lot of them back,” he said. “Sometimes they can get rid of them pretty quickly, and they’re just in the wind.”

Gilmore would not say how the two guns recovered from RC Firearms found their way to Homestead.

Sometimes, defendants will not say what they did with stolen guns — if they were sold, given away or hidden — in hopes of using that information as a bargaining chip, Gilmore said.

Guin and Sarduy remain in federal custody, charged with theft, for which each faces up to 10 years in prison. More charges, such as conspiracy, could be filed when they are indicted, Gilmore said.

New Kensington police said they plan to charge Guin and Sarduy with the theft of the pickup used in the burglary.

Authorities say Guin and Sarduy took the pickup from a New Kensington business where Guin previously worked.

The Bergs planned to reopened their shop Saturday with additional security measures in place, including solid steel doors instead of glass, and barriers that would prevent a vehicle from being used to break in again.

While firearms sales is a heavily regulated business, the security measures required by law for gun shops are not very in depth, Gilmore said. A secured front door is all that’s needed.

The Bergs added more cameras and sensors to their shop. While authorities relied heavily on cameras in investigating the RC Firearms burglary, no law requires them.

Efforts to get legislation requiring further security measures have failed, Gilmore said.

“We encourage gun stores to lock up their firearms in a safe,” he said. “They are not required to do so.”

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