Just Why Are Guns Used In Serious Crimes Ordered Destroyed?

[JettaKnight]

Once they get a taste for blood, you got to put them down. It's the same for bears, or wolves, or cougars.



A gun is a tool, for the most part. I'm not going to get too worked up if a Hi Point is shredded.

 

[JeepHammer]

Any citations for this? I certainly can't find any.

Heinous only appears in the IC once, and not in this context.

I don't have documentation, I asked, he answered, I typed, he's gone home now.

He also says the Judges in Indiana can pretty much do anything they want, they have BROAD range of power judges in other states don't have.

I think the big eye opener *Should* have been 94% go unclaimed since they were not reported with a serial number...
Thats Staggering to me, so I looked it up before posting it, 92% to 94% is accurate according to FBI.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

But, back to the original question, I suspect that "guns used in serious crimes" are destroyed because they belonged to a person who is now a felon, and can't own it. The PD doesn't want the overhead of dealing with it, so they send it to the shredder with the rest of the no-longer-needed evidence.

This pretty much sums up my experience, with the addition that it's sometimes part of a plea agreement. I suppose you could consider it part of the punishment, like a fine.

Having a 'Friend' to check the number on the 'Hot List' before I buy comes in handy, but he says about anyone can call the police and have a serial run on the 'Hot List', it will depend on how lazy your local PD is on how quick they get back to you.

That's illegal for the 'friend' to do unless he's only checking his own department's list. Even then it's likely against policy. If he's running it, or having it ran, through IDACS/NCIC and you don't have NCIC access yourself, it's illegal. The Feds do random audits. I'm a full operator, meaning I can both query and enter data into the system. When the Feds audit and there's no case number tied to an inquiry, the officer/dispatcher gets asked why they ran it and what criminal justice purpose it served. It's best to have an answer.

You cannot disclose information that's in NCIC to someone who's not eligible to access the NCIC record themselves with VERY few exceptions. I'm not lazy, but I'm not willing to risk a fine that's nearly $30k, loss of access to NCIC which would end my career as a sworn officer, and a misdemeanor conviction for you. The individual releasing the information is personally liable, and repeated violations can have the department's access revoked.

The only exemption he could think of is if you engraved your SSN or name in the firearm.

That's called an OAN (Owner Applied Number) and can be entered into NCIC regardless of if it's your SSN or just some random number. It can be done for any property, not just firearms. It's not a bad idea with non-serialized items like tools. I mark my wrenches with my last initial and last four of my SSN like we marked issued equipment in the military.

He also says the Judges in Indiana can pretty much do anything they want, they have BROAD range of power judges in other states don't have.

Such as?

 

[Thor]

To the OP, there is no good reason...but plenty of lame ones. I think mostly it boils down to "because we can; and we'll be coming for you and your little dog too next".

 

[Ark]

Depending on part of the country and political leadership, reselling or otherwise transferring is too much of a hassle, and storage fills up fast. Can't transfer them to private parties, can't store them indefinitely, only one real solution.

 

[Mongo59]

To me it is like an old fashioned book burning.

The idea of a book burning is to get rid of established ideas. The reason to destroy guns is to make it easier for those in power to prevent spread of ideas.

Both are geared towards suppression and control.

Personify the object, publicly convict it of the worst aspects of human nature, then stand back and watch herd instinct solidify the troublesome masses into placid sheep by having them destroy the very means of independence...

 

[cobber]

Nobody wants to have been the department that sold, say, a murder weapon and then it ends up being used in another crime. The argument will be, erroneously, that but for the gun being sold by the agency the subsequent crime would not have happened.

Magical thinking, if even that.

 

[chemteach]

Not sure if this could happen with today's technology, but... A bad guy shoots someone, say, in Little Rock and doesn't get caught. He moves to Indy, shoots another person using the same weapon, but gets caught. Time passes and the gun goes to auction, is purchased, sold a few times through legal transfers and the new buyer relocates to Little Rock. For whatever reason the buyer and his gun collection come under scrutiny. Is it possible, through ballistics, that the new owner could become a "person of interest" in an old case in Arkansaw?

 

[Ingomike]

Not sure if this could happen with today's technology, but... A bad guy shoots someone, say, in Little Rock and doesn't get caught. He moves to Indy, shoots another person using the same weapon, but gets caught. Time passes and the gun goes to auction, is purchased, sold a few times through legal transfers and the new buyer relocates to Little Rock. For whatever reason the buyer and his gun collection come under scrutiny. Is it possible, through ballistics, that the new owner could become a "person of interest" in an old case in Arkansaw?

Interesting question.

MM

 

[chemteach]

I probably watch too many mystery shows.

 

[JeepHammer]

Depending on part of the country and political leadership, reselling or otherwise transferring is too much of a hassle, and storage fills up fast. Can't transfer them to private parties, can't store them indefinitely, only one real solution.

I agree.

My family has trucks, several years back one of the contracts was to move over 60 TONS (120,000 pounds) of 'Scrap Metal' to a smelter.
It was firearms, and keep in mind it was a backwater county in Indiana, not some big city or state custody...
Do you know how much room, secure, guarded storage, 120,000 pounds of firearms takes up when they have to be numbered & stored so they can be located?
That's a LOT of expense for a backwater county sheriff's office!

My dad & his brothers did the contract, and they said about everything was low end and beat up.
But that was back in the days of 'Zip Guns' (home made), 'Saturday Night Special' (.22 drilled out to .32 or .38, etc).
They said the most expensive/nicest firearm they saw was a Ruger Super Blackhawk if that tells you anything...

The simple answer is 92%-94% go unclaimed.
Unclaimed they are property of the state/county/city and it might just be cheaper/easier to sell them by the pound as scrap.

Have you ever seen what winds up in property/evidence rooms?
For every HK or collector, there are HUNDREDS of sub $100 Davis, Jennings, etc. Sawed off and beat up handguns & rifles, homemade crap, etc.
PAID TIME to do the paperwork & secure storage is worth 3 times what most of that crap is worth.
And seriously, when a Tec 9 or High Point goes through a shredder, do you REALLY shed a tear?

Don't you all complain about tax money being wasted?
Do you want to pay someone by the hour to complete forms and maintain chain of custody until a suitable owner is found for every piece of crap that comes down the system?

I'm all for saving curios & relics, high end/custom firearms, but let's be real here, there are a LOT of firearms in custody! Hundreds of TONS around the country...
Do you really want to pay big money for custody on something they couldn't sell on a bet? Or wouldn't bring more than scrap price anyway?

 

[cobber]

Not sure if this could happen with today's technology, but... A bad guy shoots someone, say, in Little Rock and doesn't get caught. He moves to Indy, shoots another person using the same weapon, but gets caught. Time passes and the gun goes to auction, is purchased, sold a few times through legal transfers and the new buyer relocates to Little Rock. For whatever reason the buyer and his gun collection come under scrutiny. Is it possible, through ballistics, that the new owner could become a "person of interest" in an old case in Arkansaw?

If it's sold by an agency at auction, it's been washed through an FFL, right? Said auction would have occurred after both of the precedent crimes. Shouldn't be an issue...

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Not sure if this could happen with today's technology, but... A bad guy shoots someone, say, in Little Rock and doesn't get caught. He moves to Indy, shoots another person using the same weapon, but gets caught. Time passes and the gun goes to auction, is purchased, sold a few times through legal transfers and the new buyer relocates to Little Rock. For whatever reason the buyer and his gun collection come under scrutiny. Is it possible, through ballistics, that the new owner could become a "person of interest" in an old case in Arkansaw?

I won't say "no" but I think you've got better odds of being struck by lightening as you turn in your winning PowerBall ticket after your date with Sofia Vergara. The match would be made the first time the gun was test fired and compared against the database. In order for anything like this to happen, the gun would have to be involved in yet another incident bringing it to police attention, the originating agency would have to be unaware of the first hit, and after so much passage of time simply owning the weapon involved doesn't make you a "person of interest" in the way you are meaning it unless you fit other factors. Do you happen to be the same race/sex/approximate age/approximate height, etc. and were in the city at the time? Probably not. You'd be eliminated very quickly.

 

[JeepHammer]

I asked my State Trooper friend one time about ballistics tests on every firearm they find and he rolled his eyes...
Unless they have a SERIOUS crime to compare it to, they don't randomly ballistics test.

In his words... "There ain't no way I would be in the same room with most of that junk when it went off."

 

[BugI02]

Well, over here in Ahia; when we buy police trades the OHP ones are favored because they show much less wear and tear. Just sayin'

 

[Herr Vogel]

Have you ever seen what winds up in property/evidence rooms?
For every HK or collector, there are HUNDREDS of sub $100 Davis, Jennings, etc. Sawed off and beat up handguns & rifles, homemade crap, etc.
PAID TIME to do the paperwork & secure storage is worth 3 times what most of that crap is worth.
And seriously, when a Tec 9 or High Point goes through a shredder, do you REALLY shed a tear?

There is a solution to this.
The way Goodwill runs their operation, when they get a 'donation', any media object with a barcode gets scanned and the expected resale price is ascertained based on completed ebay transactions. If the expected resale price is greater than the cost of processing, it gets sent to a central location to be cataloged and resold through ebay or similar. If not, it gets put on the shelf, and if it sells, great, if not, it gets thrown out when they run out of shelf room.
There is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing with firearms and Gunbroker. Heck, you don't even have to do the work yourself, I'm sure there are FFLs who would fight each other over the opportunity, just crate them up and sell them by the 500lb lot.

 

[Ark]

Nobody wants to have been the department that sold, say, a murder weapon and then it ends up being used in another crime. The argument will be, erroneously, that but for the gun being sold by the agency the subsequent crime would not have happened.

Magical thinking, if even that.

I've read articles railing against police for allowing their own taxpayer-purchased service weapons to end up "on the streets" and "used in crimes", despite being sold legally through FFLs. People are dumb.

 

[CPT Nervous]

In Michigan, it is my understanding that law enforcement agencies may request firearms from the State Police. When the State Police comes into possession of a firearm that was requested, whichever agency requested them first, gets them. One of the officers I work with was an officer for a small town in Michigan. His department was equipped with Glock 21's in this way.

The way he explained it, most confiscated guns ended up going to MSP. Agencies would submit requests to MSP for certain firearms, such as sidearms, AR's, shotguns, whatever. Whenever MSP received a firearm, they were inspected by an armorer. Then they check the requisitions, and offer it to the first requesting agency on the list.

This is a fantastic idea. It really helps small departments with limited budgets to be able to equip their officers. I haven't heard of this happening here, but even if it was limited to LE agencies, at least all those guns don't have to die. Someone can use them.

 

[Mongo59]

There is a solution to this.
The way Goodwill runs their operation, when they get a 'donation', any media object with a barcode gets scanned and the expected resale price is ascertained based on completed ebay transactions. If the expected resale price is greater than the cost of processing, it gets sent to a central location to be cataloged and resold through ebay or similar. If not, it gets put on the shelf, and if it sells, great, if not, it gets thrown out when they run out of shelf room.
There is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing with firearms and Gunbroker. Heck, you don't even have to do the work yourself, I'm sure there are FFLs who would fight each other over the opportunity, just crate them up and sell them by the 500lb lot.

Buying by lot for resale has already been done for years. The money they get is used to supply ammo and arms for the dept. It has been shut down in a lot of places due to public opinion.

For example: (and I am not making this up) A large gun dealer in Indiana had an agreement with a large city in Ohio to buy all their confiscated arms. On the last trip to that cities police dept they said they were sorry but the city council will no longer allow them to sell the firearms, but they did have a couple of semi trailers full of crack pipes they could let them have...

What kind of delusional, gun fearing psychotic would think that one up?

 

[chemteach]

I won't say "no" but I think you've got better odds of being struck by lightening as you turn in your winning PowerBall ticket after your date with Sofia Vergara. The match would be made the first time the gun was test fired and compared against the database. In order for anything like this to happen, the gun would have to be involved in yet another incident bringing it to police attention, the originating agency would have to be unaware of the first hit, and after so much passage of time simply owning the weapon involved doesn't make you a "person of interest" in the way you are meaning it unless you fit other factors. Do you happen to be the same race/sex/approximate age/approximate height, etc. and were in the city at the time? Probably not. You'd be eliminated very quickly.

Pretty much not going to happen. You really didn't need to include the lightening strike and the Powerball win in your illustration of the probability of this happening. The chances of me getting a date with Sofia were enough.