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.
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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.
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A Missouri business called Gunbusters, which patented a “firearms pulverizer,” was responsible for dealing with the Flint weapons. The company says it has taken in more than 200,000 firearms over the past decade from about 950 police agencies around the country, from Baton Rouge, La., to St. Louis to Hartford, Vt.
At least a half-dozen other firms do similar work.
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Gunbusters and its five licensees across the country, for example, recently averaged more than $90,000 a week in combined online sales of hundreds of disassembled guns from government clients.
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The disposal of unwanted guns has emerged as yet another front in America’s culture wars.
Red state lawmakers have pushed to prohibit law enforcement agencies from destroying firearms in their inventories
Much more in the article. Riverside, California is one of the cities discussed.