A handgun stolen from a Lincoln store nearly five years ago has turned up during the arrest of a man after a traffic stop in Northern California, officials said.   

The .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun was one of 79 handguns and rifles stolen in fall 2007 when two teenagers broke into the Scheels store at SouthPointe Pavilions shopping center in Lincoln.

The gun was found in the center console of a car after a 25-year-old man was pulled over for speeding down U.S. Highway 101 in Petaluma, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.

The driver told police he had been using the gun for target practice but that it belonged to his uncle. The driver was arrested on suspicion of possessing a loaded gun.

Two people were eventually convicted of breaking into Scheels. Cleophus Collier, 22, is in prison. Dominique Barton, 22, has been assigned to a community corrections program.

Authorities have recovered 50 of the weapons stolen on Oct. 1, 2007.“It’s amazing how far these guns have ended up,” said Lincoln Police Sgt. Jeri Roeder.

Four of the rifles and 26 handguns were recovered the morning after the break-in, police said. Twenty more have turned up in various spots across the country, including Boulder County, Colorado, and Phoenix. A soldier from Phoenix who had served in Afghanistan used one of the stolen semiautomatics to kill himself.

Twenty-nine of the guns have not been recovered, and it’s likely more have ended up in California.

Trista Frederick, a spokeswoman for the Kansas City Division of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said California has stricter gun controls than some other states. Criminals buy weapons elsewhere and move them surreptitiously into California to sell on the black market, Frederick said.

Source: Lincoln Journal Star, http://www.journalstar.com