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.
Buyers online can easily replace what’s missing and reconstitute the weapon.
I like how this article doesn’t mention that since it is the serialized receiver they need to “fix” the buyer still has to pass a NICs background check at an FFL to get the receiver separately, instead implying they can just buy it online like ordering car parts. Nice subtle move to make it sound worse than it actually is, gotta push those feature bans!
Yep. Most people clutching their pearls at this story don’t have any idea how difficult it is to actually build anything outside a gen 3 Glock or an ar-15. And those have “80% kits” that basically say “drill hole here” available on the market. Try finding a hi point, lorcin, or even Taurus or low end S&W pistol, or cheap shotgun(like a Stevens or Remington 870) receiver(because that’s most of what comes into these guys who have businesses like this), and you’ll find out it is a) cost prohibitive, b) still has to go through a nics check bc there’s nobody home building much of anything (well, the hi point may be the odd one out bc there are 3d printed frames you could make). What they do end up doing is a lot of business with guys refurbishing grandpa’s old deer or duck gun.
And thankfully these kits are out there. Say you have inherited grandpa’s old rifle and it has a clean receiver but is otherwise pretty thrashed… You can spend a few hundred bucks and get parts to repair old guns that would otherwise have no parts availability.
For sure!
I guess that companies like this one
https://youtu.be/5q54yLuJlKk?feature=shared
adhere to regulations, but it is not unimaginable that there are those who could make the same part and sell it under the table. It’s not even a necessity to own a CNC to cut this part out of a block of aluminium, an old-time milling machine and 20 hours worth of training are enough to get the job done.
Well yes crimes can always be committed but making and selling without a manufacturers license is a serious crime punishable by iirc 10yr in prison or more. Making your own is legal but virtually impossible to stop even if they have to make a luty SMG and ECM rifle the barrel at home.
I would like to have the imagination that would let me come up with schemes like that. It would never occur to me to make money off of gun violence. American capitalist are something else…
you’d be amazed how far we take our fetishes here. the pro-murdering-kids-lobby is hella strong.
the pro-murdering-kids-lobby
They prefer to be called “conservatives” now.
They already pivoted, it’s “pro-life libertarians” now. AKA the people who think that murdering kids is ok as long as it happens outside the womb.
Sounds like fraud, but I’m sure they have some bullshit legaleze protecting their ass.
A “gun” is legally defined. There are dozens of parts, but usually only 1-2 are deemed to be the “firearm” for legal purposes, and those get the serial number. The rest, even when necessary for proper operation of the weapon, are essentially just accessories as far as the law is concerned.
Sounds like a useful loophole for gun reform and getting around the 2nd amendment.
It’s a practical line that has to be drawn. Otherwise your going to have to go for a background check for every pin screw and spring you want to buy.
Some countries use the barrel as the S/N part instead of the receiver but I’d rather a wear item not be the s/n item. Plus, with AR15 you can buy one receiver and then gets finished uppers in 5.56mm, 9mm, .50 Beowulf, .300 Blackout etc.
Or have both, and a replacement barrel needs to be stamped with a serial number as well
That’s kind of what California has in place for semi auto rifles. If the gun has certain ‘assault features’ like a collapsible stock, pistol grip, muzzle device, etc - the firearm needs to be taken apart to remove the magazine.
If the firearm has no assault features, then you can have a standard removable magazine (capped at 10 rounds). As a result you’ll see some pretty odd looking CA compliant rifles sold in state that are featureless.
For an AR-15 you can just use an AR Maglock and Kingpin, then it’s just a button press to very slightly separate the upper and lower receiver, allowing for magazine ejection. It’s almost as fast to change magazines as in other states.
There’s also zero chance a criminal would follow these laws. It takes maybe a minute to disable a maglock and swap on whatever stock you want. “Freedom Week” or old 30 round mags are prevalent as well.
it’s why the “high end airsoft” market is so big in Japan. they’re basically just the externals of a gun, then they buy rest piecemeal.
Spoken with such confidence, but no facts
Japan arguably has the most stringent weapons laws in the world, and while the high end airsoft is a big deal there, there isn’t a black/gray market for rebuilding like you’re implying. If you like guns in Japan, you join the JSDF, emigrate, or buy airsoft.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_and_Sword_Possession_Control_Law
Isn’t airsoft dangerous enough without much modification? Maybe not lethal but I know several people who wanted to buy that for self-defence where it’s hard to obtain a firearm.
Airsoft for self-defense?
That is the worst idea I have ever heard.
Literally all you’re going to do is piss them off. Unless you have a rediculously high powered one and put it right through somebodys eye you ARE NOT incapacitating someone with airsoft.
Ok, I see, thanks for an explanation
Self-defense? In Japan? Lol
No, I was not referring to Japan
idiots
Most of a gun isn’t the part that is legally considered a gun. The lower receiver, which is the part that makes it shoot and has the serial number on it is legally the gun. The rest are just gun accessories essentially and anybody can buy and sell them. You can’t just turn any amount of them into one functional gun, you need the lower receiver. You cannot buy a lower receiver without going through a background check and the fact that you can buy everything but the lower receiver without a background check doesn’t change the fact that you don’t have a gun without getting a hold of the lower receiver which does require a background check to get.
This article is rage bait for people who don’t know about guns.
You cannot buy a lower receiver without going through a background check
yeah but you can easily buy an 80% arms lower, finish that yourself, and no bg check involved.
Or you could just get a lower from private sales which aren’t required to bg check.
Saying it’s impossimole wivvout de lowah is just bullshit and you know it. But cute attempt to be cranky. Like you’re attempting to rage bait for people who don’t know enough about the arms trade.
Yes, there is no (federal) law against making a gun yourself or from a kit that has basically always been a thing. You can also 3d print most of all of a gun. And this also does nothing to change the lack of UBC law. Those are unrelated issues. (And for the record, I support most UBC laws).
The ability to buy or build a gun without a background check via private party is unchanged by the ability to cheaply buy gun accessories from destroyed guns.
The ability to buy or build a gun without a background check via private party is unchanged by the ability to cheaply buy gun accessories from destroyed guns.
yeah pretty fucked up that we’ll let people buy most of a gun without a check, then the rest without another check. good to find ground we can agree on.
440 million firearms in the USA. Never seems like enough to some folks. And you know what, I’d be chill with it, if they could fucking secure their weapons.
But they won’t. Sometime this week, someone, somewhere is gonna get murdered with a firearm some dickhole couldn’t bother to secure, who left it in their car, who didn’t even know it was already stolen because they’re too fucking dumb to do the minimum.
No disagreement there, my guns are locked the fuck up and UBCs and gun storage laws are no brainers.
TY. I wish more gun loving people had the same attitude.
Gun buyback programs are almost always a joke of one kind or another.
It’s wild how you get: gun buyback programs = bad. Rather than: corrupt corporations need watchdogs.
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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. 🤷♂️
What?
Australia had mandatory confiscation of ALL guns basically, and heavily restricted new sales. No guns, no shootings duh
The US has no such blanket ban, and so these kind of VOLUNTARY buybacks are generally pretty unhelpful for reducing gun crime and/or mass shootings. The buyback may ‘take off the streets’ X number of gun from a community, but if there’s still 5 million NICS background checks for new gun sales each year, then the US buyback are not achieving the stated goal of safer communities. The same money and time could be spent on better programs like Oakland CA is doing currently
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(Not sure if my other comment got deleted successfully or not, so posting this next to it)
Sorry, I reacted to your second sentence without reading the rest. (I am Australian, I was a bit offended by reading “Australia had mandatory confiscation of ALL guns basically”)
In Australia the gun buybacks were followed by decreases in gun violence. It’s debated whether that was because of the gun buybacks or other policies, it’s hard to be certain without two identical countries and A-B testing. Nonetheless: anything that makes guns and gun parts less available is likely to help and doesn’t seem to have much in the way of disadvantages other than money. These days it’s mostly through gun amnesties (not buybacks) so that problem is avoided.
Why would you “sell back” actual guns when you can build a functioning 12 gauge shotgun from $20 of parts from the hardware store? Slap a few of those together and turn them in for a solid contribution toward your next gun.
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.
You think intentionally fraudulent programs with no meaningful oversight or meaningful accountability are OK
You should use concrete to make sure those goalposts don’t move around so much.
You should misuse more buzzwords and make increasingly wild assumptions.
Anyhow, you’re going to have to try and start an argument with someone else now.
Goodbye.
Only in the US, again. Other places just crush that stuff and melt it.
Pretty much, yeah.
Why would you destroy a perfectly good gun, when you could sell it to someone who can legally own it?
Why is that?
There’s no real oversight, no accountability, little to no regulation, and the prices they offer are almost always well below the fair market value of the firearm (never mind the black market value) so most people end up keeping, selling, or pawning the gun instead. Functional firearms are kept in circulation as a result (the opposite of the supposedly intended goal).
There are also cases of people just making $20 pipe guns to rip off even the well intentioned programs, some programs try to mitigate this, some don’t, but there are no set rules beyond whatever the program decides.
I guarantee you, the program mentioned in the article is not the first to pull that reselling shit too.
These programs need to be regulated and there needs to be meaningful oversight or they will always be a joke. As it stands they are, at best, public relations campaigns and, at worst, fraudulent and potentially very dangerous.
That’s unfortunate. I wish we had competent government.
Groups like the NRA put a lot of money into lobbying politicians to protect the gun industry. They don’t even really care about the 2nd amendment, they care about protecting the bottom line of companies like Colt and S&W.
Too busy focusing on Not Abjectly Cruel Government. Competent Government is another step once non-rich people are safe and have rights.
Buybacks don’t make a lot of sense when the people turning in their guns can just use the money to buy new ones. May as well cut out the middleman and just give money directly to gun manufacturers.
I kinda doubt many are doing that, the prices buy backs offer are usually ridiculously low: They’d be financially better off just trading the gun, doing a private sale, or illegally selling it for even more to a convicted felon on the black market.
If buyback programs really wanted to get guns off the street, they’d pay more money and the process that occurs after the buyback would be transparent and verifiable.
What they actually seem to be are a mix of shady profiteering (like mentioned in the article above) or PR feel-good projects that allow politicians to act like they’re actually doing something to fix the problem, when the reality is, it’s a band-aid at best and profiteering off of undermining programs meant to reduce gun violence.
This assumes nobody has anything to do with their money other than spend it on guns.
It’s an exaggeration, but here’s something that’s not.
There’s demonstrably a big market for guns in the US. A certain number of gun sales will happen every year. Used guns reduce the demand for new guns, thus reducing the money gun manufacturers can make. By destroying surrendered guns rather than selling them, buyback programs are choosing not to let the surrendered guns satisfy part of the demand for guns, thus increasing the demand for new guns and thus the revenue of gun makers.
Buyback programs can reduce the number of guns in specific communities, but the number of people nationwide who have guns is limited only by the number of people who want guns and have legal access to them, not the availability of guns for purchase. In other words, the usefulness of a buyback program is largely predicted on the discredited theory of supply-side economics.
The alternative to “a portion of guns surrendered don’t get destroyed” can be far worse.
How about just banning the profiteering off of fraudulent buybacks and making sure buy backs adhere to reasonable standards and oversight?
I attended an auction in UT where I came across guns like this and the part that was destroyed on most of them was the serial number. Yay 'Merica and upcycling?
Seems sensationalized, they destroy the part considered the firearm (lower receiver) and sell the rest for parts. I don’t see any issues with that.
Those guns have more constitutional rights than the school children that are indiscriminately murdered with them.
rights are a fiction. all that matters is power. you’re not going to fix your problems relying on the rhetoric that surrounds a fiction. you need to seize power.
I didn’t know Carl Schmitt had a Lemmy Account!
baby, I’m an anarchist
Nah, the sovereignty of ones rights is one of the most important tenants of anarchism.
The idea that they are a fiction and that power is what matters is the bedrock of 20th century authoritarianism from Nazism to MLism to Maoism and so on.
rights are what thos in power say you may do. if we destroy the structures of power, the language of “rights” is vestigial.
Yeah no, rights are what a society protects from infringement by individual authority figures regardless of official codification or not.
Destroying the structures of unjust and unneeded hierarchy doesn’t render rights vestigial it just makes it a lot easier to guarantee them against abuse by authority figures.
have you ever seen a right? are these rights in the room with us, now? when people in power take your right to privacy through the patriot act, does your right to privacy still exist?
the answer to all of these is “no”.
you can keep telling stories about rights, but they are no more real than Santa clause.
I am the authority on my own politics. you can’t tell me I’m not an anarchist.
Yeah but you’re not an authority on everyone else’s, which is what you’re trying to be when you insist that anarchism is compatible with the notion that rights are a fiction.
Literally no other anarchist will agree with that just on the principle of words having meanings that are generally consistent from user to user.
you insist that anarchism is compatible with the notion that rights are a fiction.
it is
Yeah but you’re not an authority on everyone else’s, which is what you’re trying to be
no, I’m not.
Literally no other anarchist will agree with that
wrong
rights are a fiction. all that matters is power
…says the only country where it’s a mass shooting a day.
About 25 years ago, I took in a shitty Brazilian-made .380 to be destroyed by local police dept. Filled out the form and answered questions from a young officer who seemed incredulous that I actually wanted a gun destroyed.
After I finished and was escorted out to the reception area, I used the bathroom. When I came out, I heard the officer yell to everyone the back area, “Hey, does anyone want a Taurus .380?”
Hell yeah!
Also, nytimes paywalls their articles. can we get a non-paywalled version?
NYTimes cares so much about democracy they hide all of their information to paying customers while letting FOXNews offer an alternate reality for free without any of the finger wagging and scolding
