Communities across the U.S. are fueling a secondary arms market by giving seized and surrendered guns to disposal services that destroy one part and resell the rest.
When Flint, Mich., announced in September that 68 assault weapons collected in a gun buyback would be incinerated, the city cited its policy of never reselling firearms.
“Gun violence continues to cause enormous grief and trauma,” said Mayor Sheldon Neeley. “I will not allow our city government to profit from our community’s pain by reselling weapons that can be turned against Flint residents.”
But Flint’s guns were not going to be melted down. Instead, they made their way to a private company that has collected millions of dollars taking firearms from police agencies, destroying a single piece of each weapon stamped with the serial number and selling the rest as nearly complete gun kits. Buyers online can easily replace what’s missing and reconstitute the weapon.
Hundreds of towns and cities have turned to a growing industry that offers to destroy guns used in crimes, surrendered in buybacks or replaced by police force upgrades. But these communities are in fact fueling a secondary arms market, where weapons slated for destruction are recycled into civilian hands, often with no background check required, according to interviews and a review of gun disposal contracts, patent records and online listings for firearms parts.
It’s wild how you get: gun buyback programs = bad. Rather than: corrupt corporations need watchdogs.
Gun buy backs are a total joke. All you end up buying is a bunch of busted ass guns that nobody wanted. Wish they would have one around here. I could unload a few that I hate, are useless or nonfunctional. Get paid son!
Saw a hilarious picture of an Australian buy back. Those ancient rifles, shotguns and rusted out revolvers were laughable. If you used a tool to gather the most common color from that pile, it would be that blackish orange guns turn when they rust. Bet not 1 in 10 was functional.
And the idiots in the article were patting themselves on the back for doing such a fine job taking these guns out of circulation! They were so very proud.
How many mass shootings has Australia had in the past decade, again?
Mandatory confiscation and eliminating new sales =! US gun buybacks where the stores are still open
Kind of a weird position to say that gun buybacks played no part in removing the guns. 🤷♂️
You think intentionally fraudulent programs with no meaningful oversight or meaningful accountability are OK? That’s what seems wild to me but ok.
There’s no way this is the first time this has happened either.
Maybe, then, you should be calling for more oversight and accountability of such programs rather than dismissing them as a joke.
You’re making a shitload of wild assumptions about me (also, they are wrong), but ok: Good chat.
By the way, if you look further up the thread, you’ll see that I called for just that.