Police in Salem, Mass., arrested a 17-year-old high school student on Monday for carrying a handgun to class.

Why is that news here in Lancaster, 385 miles southwest, you wonder?

Because that particular weapon, a .380 semiautomatic Beretta, had been reported stolen from a Quarryville-area gun shop nearly nine months ago, police say.

"We're looking at the background of that gun, and how it made its way from Pennsylvania to here," Salem Police Capt. Paul Tucker said today.

The case illustrates how easily stolen guns are passed from one person to another across hundreds of miles — and how they usually end up in the wrong hands, authorities said.

"Firearms, they do travel," said Joe Hockley, a Lancaster County detective who works on firearms investigations with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Attorney's office.

Even the owner of Mallin's Rod and Gun Supplies on Route 272 isn't shocked the weapon ended up so far away after being stolen in August 2006.

"They climbed the roof and came in through the attic," Gerald Mallin said this morning. "Whoever would do that wouldn't try to sell the gun around here because they know it would more likely be traced back."

The question police are beginning to ask is exactly how did the gun get from the burglars to the high school student?

That will prove difficult to answer, experts say.

"Guns change so many different hands quite often," Hockley said. "It wouldn't be unusual for something like this to occur. The big problem today is they do end up in the hands of people who aren't supposed to have them."

In a case that has generated lots of attention in Massachusetts, police in Salem arrested Jurgen Llanaj at his high school Monday morning after his fellow students reported seeing him show off the weapon.

The gun was found stashed in his backpack. "There was no ammunition at all. It did have a clip. It's a fairly new weapon in excellent condition — a nice gun," Tucker said.

Llanaj was not licensed to carry a firearm and has ties to a gang near Salem, NBC 7 in Boston reported, citing court documents.

Police charged Llanaj with carrying a firearm without a license, carrying a firearm on school grounds, receiving stolen property worth more than $250 and a weapons security violation. He was arraigned and held without bail, the television station reported.

Salem police seized the gun and ran the serial number through the National Crime Information Center, a federal law-enforcement database. They found it had been reported stolen from Mallin's shop on Aug. 24, 2006.

Salem police said the teen isn't cooperating with them, so it will be hard to figure out how Llanaj wound up with the gun.

"We can only speculate," Tucker said. "He's not cooperating."

According to newspaper records, the gun seized by Salem police was among six stolen from Mallin's shop, at 801 Lancaster Pike, last August. The Beretta sells for at least $500.

The burglars apparently knew what they were looking for. After climbing onto the second story of the shop, they broke in through an attic window just before 2 a.m. as the alarm sounded.

The burglars grabbed the six guns from a glass case and fled before Pennsylvania State Police, which patrols much of the southern end of the county, could get there.

Mallin said his shop has been ripped off a handful of times in the 20 years he's been in business. He blames drugs for the 2006 break-in, saying the thieves probably hawked the guns for a hit.

"Everybody gets on their high horse about gun control," he said. "What we really need is drug control. They'll steal anything like that and sell it for drugs."

He said he is relieved the Salem teen was caught before anything bad happened at the high school.

"I'm glad it ended the way it did," Mallin said.

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