L.A. County Sheriff to destroy 8,300 firearms

[ericire12]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/la-county-sheriffs-department-to-destroy-8300-weapons-seized-from-criminals.html

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will destroy 8,300 confiscated weapons Tuesday at a steel mill in Rancho Cucamonga.

The annual effort is known as Project Isaiah. The stash of weapons taken from criminals will be dumped from a series of tractor-trailers into the smelter at the Tamco Steel Mill, said Deputy Bill Brauberger, who described the event as a celebration for the Sheriff’s Department.

“It’s pretty exciting and very visual,” said Brauberger, who attended the event last year.

The Tamco Steel Mill has hosted the event for the last 17 years, he said. [Updated at 1:38 p.m.: Tamco donates its furnace, equipment and personnel to convert the weapons into rebar and will allocate the steel from the melted weapons to be used for upgrades to freeways and bridges in California, Nevada and Arizona.]

This year’s event will begin at 5 a.m. Tuesday, he said.

-- Sam Allen

[JC5123]

Has no one explained to them that they could actually make some good money by auctioning off those weapons instead of destroying them?

[Texas_Bryan]

Has no one explained to them that they could actually make some good money by auctioning off those weapons instead of destroying them?

They're just trying to save you from yourself...  Sometimes holding on to irrational fear, for tyrannical purposes, is more important than supporting your community, specially when your a broke ass hippie.

[ratcatcher55]

They use to do this at the US Steel plant in Fairless Hills when I was young. The PA state law did not allow resale of siezed firearms.

Don't worry, they will make more for Billt to buy!

They also burned dope in the open hearth.  I heard there were quite a few pigeons that would float down from the rafters in an altered state.

[Solus]

Has no one explained to them that they could actually make some good money by auctioning off those weapons instead of destroying them?

Yeah...they could have the auction at one end of the auditorium and the Buy Back program at the other end....

[Sponsor]

[bafsu92]

Most likely the haul has already been cherry picked by LA County and LAPD and anything that didn't make it into an officers personal collection or drop gun stash isn't worth owning anyway. They're probably just melting junk and illegally modified stuff.

[Rob10ring]

They just showed the guns being dumped in on the news. They only show it real fast, but almost everything looked like crap. However, it looked like there was a decent Marlin lever-gun in the pile. 

[ericire12]

They just showed the guns being dumped in on the news. They only show it real fast, but almost everything looked like crap. However, it looked like there was a decent Marlin lever-gun in the pile. 

Looks like mostly hunting rifles (I guess all the handguns must have sunk to the bottom).... I feel safer already

[Texas_Bryan]

They're just melting stolen rifles they didn't bother to try and return to owners I bet.

[bafsu92]

It's all a big show, 3 ring circus for the media. Anything really nice was pulled out long ago. I hope nothing I've had stolen makes its way to SoCal because it looks like they're to lazy to try to find original owners.