‘Anti-gun stupidity’: Honolulu destroys $575G worth of police firearms

www.foxnews.com...
[ whoops - sorry - forgot the link ]
They got rid of $575, 000 in guns, some of them still new in the box. What could the dept have done with that ? New cars, uniforms, training, donated them to another dept that just didn't have it in their budget for new ones, etc... But what do they do?
Melted them.
So, what happens when they need new ones? They had perfectly good weapons, some brand new, but still bought Glocks for the whole dept, which are pretty close in price to the Smith & Wesson they got rid of. Why not sell the guns and try to recover some of that tax payer money? We can safely assume they wasted close to 1 million dollars on this. The price of that many new ones, plus the value of the ones destroyed. That's ok though, it's just tax payer money, plenty where that came from.

Second Amendment advocates are firing away at a decision by Honolulu officials to destroy $575,000 worth of perfectly good handguns in a move one critic called the “height of anti-gun stupidity.”

Some 2,300 Smith & Wesson 9 mm handguns, including at least 200 that are brand-new and in unopened boxes, were issued to the city’s police department. But with the 2,200-member force upgrading to lighter and less expensive Glock 17s, the guns were set to be permanently holstered. While it is customary throughout the country for departments to auction the guns to law-abiding citizens, including the police who once carried them, or donate them to another department, Honolulu opted to destroy them.

Even though they could have sold them to buyers and since they are a police dept, done a thorough background check, but, nope, can't be bothered. Melt'em.

Selling the guns, with mandatory background checks to ensure they were only purchased by legal owners, could have netted the city $575,000, according to Hawaii News Now. Several police officers reportedly were interested in buying old service weapons for personal use, and the department has previously sold phased-out weapons to its staff, but this time opted to melt them down two weeks ago.

Put this in General Chit Chat because I couldn't decide if this was anti gun stupidity, or just the usual govt waste.

‘Anti-gun stupidity’ That's an interesting title. There's about 7 billion people that think the gun culture in the US is just that.... stupid. So you'll have to be a little more specific. Are you just looking for American back pats or is this actually a real discussion?

a reply to: intrepid

Actually a discussion. Why would a city waste that much money, other than it was "free" money? They could have auctioned them off and at least made some back. But, they decided to waste, I guessing, close to 1 million tax payer dollars. The people of Hawaii can't be too happy about that. I wouldn't be if my state pulled that kind of stunt.

Oh and yes, it is "anti gun stupidity".
Are they so anti gun they don't mind wasting tax dollars? Like I said in the OP, they are a police dept, they could have done very thorough back ground checks, but still decided to waste all that money. Wouldn't even let their own officers buy them.

a reply to: DAVID64

The easy answer.... they did not "melt" all of them (or possibly any).

But now "someone" can sell them and the money goes to the "right" people......

Just a theory...

originally posted by: DAVID64
a reply to: intrepid

Actually a discussion. Why would a city waste that much money, other than it was "free" money? They could have auctioned them off and at least made some back. But, they decided to waste, I guessing, close to 1 million tax payer dollars. The people of Hawaii can't be too happy about that. I wouldn't be if my state pulled that kind of stunt.

Oh and yes, it is "anti gun stupidity".
Are they so anti gun they don't mind wasting tax dollars? Like I said in the OP, they are a police dept, they could have done very thorough back ground checks, but still decided to waste all that money. Wouldn't even let their own officers buy them.

Yes, it will be interesting to watch them crush and discard their entire cruiser fleet when they upgrade to hybrids so no one can drive those nasty unhybridated automobiles.

Money well spent, might as well have a bonfire with petty cash, it just increases the budget anyway so, why not?

a reply to: DAVID64

How about a source? I've read the excerpts and there's nothing in there that points to the motivation for melting the guns down to be "anti-gun" unless the mere act of melting a gun down is a blow to the 2nd Amendment?

a reply to: theantediluvian

That is the title of the original article, which we are supposed to copy in full. Not my own. But you're right. Sorry I forgot the link. Fixed it.

Besides that, the Chief of Police lied when he said he tried to donate them to the Sheriff's Dept.

Despite Yu’s claims, the Hawaii state sheriffs division – which uses the same gun manufacturer – told Hawaii News Now that no offer for donation was made to them.

So, yeah, that gives me the impression the Chief is a bit anti gun for private citizens.

a reply to: intrepid

Can you back up that 7 bllion person statistic?

Let's make it easier. When the SHTF, which would you rather have to protect your babies:

1. Firearm

2. Knife

3. Crossbow

4. Black Belt in TaiQuanWhatever

5. A large vocabulary

6. Judge Judy protecting you

7. What would be your weapon of choice, if none of thee above?

Realizing this thread is about what Hawaii's actions and less about gun enthusiast against gun noners, I am curious where you stand.

I own no firearm or intended weapon, and obviously am less intelligent than the masses here for questioning a mod, so please be gentle with my oncoming punishment.
Mercy?

It matters not if it is firearms or uniform issue jackets its still a shed load of cash to
just bin if true then there is either criminal stupidity/negligence or fraud going on there
because you can be certain the "someone" will make a nice bonus from this.

There is also another player in this race to stupidity.

The gun manufactures do not want $575,000.00 worth of second hand guns on the market. It takes a LOT of sales away from the manufacturers.

I would not be surprised at all if there was a sweet heart deal, under the table payments, to ensure those guns were destroyed.

It may even have been a part of the deal to purchase the new weapons.

Glock would not want 2,300 second hand S&Ws swarming all over the second hand market. It would have hugely impacted their sales of new firearms and for quite a time period, especially in the small market that Hawaii is.

Now, we will probably never know, one way or the other but it is very likely that a big discount was offered under the proviso that the S&Ws were destroyed.

Gun manufacturers would also not want the weapons passed on to some other agency for the same greedy little reasons.

Follow the money trail. It would be interesting to see the purchase agreement but I would bet my left nut that it is fall of non-disclosure clauses.

P

a reply to: pheonix358

Glock, with an estimated $100,000,000 in annual sales, doesn't need to include the discarding of S&W LE pistols in a sales deal. Glock produces some of the most popular police sidearms currently available, and I find it difficult to believe they would insist a department dump NIB inferior sidearms.
www.forbes.com...

As far as crimping the secondary market, gun manufacturers have not been responsible for lobbying to impede used firearm sales. I'm sure most gun manufacturers would prefer NIB sales, but name recognition in that market and repeat sales from the same customers generates income for these companies.

Gun control is a major agenda in this island state, and perhaps those in power along with LE did not want to see these firearms in the hands of legally qualified citizens. Less guns equals less gun violence, according to those that promote gun control.

a reply to: DAVID64

I want to comment, but can't find the words to express how utterly moronic an action this was!

We need IQ tests for politicians.

a reply to: pheonix358

Interesting thought, but I don't think it works like that. Someone that wants a new gun wants a new gun. There are enough on the market that it's not hard to find a used one if you want to go that route.

It's like cars, the used market is there for people that want used things, but there are a lot of folks that want a new car.

originally posted by: LadyGreenEyes
a reply to: DAVID64

I want to comment, but can't find the words to express how utterly moronic an action this was!

We need IQ tests for politicians.

Yeah, because having a high density population (as Hawaii does) and a low gun homicide rate that compares to all other developed countries (unlike the rest of the US), is just the definition of stupidity, right?

I would personally argue its a good sign of a low IQ when people start defining stupidity as preserving human life and making the streets a safer place to live.... but that's just me.

a reply to: Subaeruginosa

You obviously didn't read the article, or just conveniently skipped this -

Over the last 15 years, the number of guns registered in Hawaii increased dramatically. Data released by the Hawaii Attorney General’s Office shows that 420,409 firearms were registered from 2000 to 2014, in addition to the already existing one million firearms in a state that has an estimated population of 1.4 million.

Hawaii has one of the lowest gun death rates in the nation, which some attribute to its spike in ownership per capita, while others claim it is a result of its strict gun control laws.

1.4 million people and, if the numbers are correct, more guns than people and that has happened over the last 15 years. But somehow, the murder rate is still low. Hmmmmm.

a reply to: DAVID64

LOL - c'mon Davo - since when has money ever been a factor in government decision making? This is no drama mate, the taxpayer will cough up for new guns when required.

BUT - you wanna know the height of insanity - they just freed up more ammo for existing guns so in effect they have just made a moot-point of the message they are attempting to convey.

Insane in the membrane.......

a reply to: intrepid

Well, it's either piss-poor fiscal management by those in the Honolulu government in charge of being good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars, or they didn't want to sell them because they didn't want the guns going out into the general public. Or, I'm sure there's a third option, where the department was just lazy and didn't want to do the paperwork, but I'd argue that falls under the first option I mentioned.

So, in my opinion, both options are unacceptable, but I do agree that the "anti-gun stupidity" accusation is, at this point, unfounded by what was shared with us.

But then again, so is your claim that 7 billion people find the "gun culture" in America stupid.

a reply to: DAVID64

Do you expect anyone with the ability of a rational thought process to take that blatantly biased fox news article seriously? You know, being how notorious fox news is at providing quality journalism and all that.

This Wikipedia article says Hawaii only has a gun ownership rate of 6.7% of the population, one of the lowest of any US state. The stats are from FBI reports, apparently.

Gun Violence in US by state

Its as clear as day that the 2 things that cause a high rate of gun violence are firstly the population density, then how high the gun ownership rate is.

originally posted by: Domo1
a reply to: pheonix358

Interesting thought, but I don't think it works like that. Someone that wants a new gun wants a new gun. There are enough on the market that it's not hard to find a used one if you want to go that route.

It's like cars, the used market is there for people that want used things, but there are a lot of folks that want a new car.

Well, it might be recovering now (the used car market), but when asinine government action caused issues in the market (Cash for Clunkers, where they did just what these police did and just destroyed the items that they paid for with tax dollars), the availability for those who want/need used items because new is too expensive don't have that option anymore. AND, tax money was wasted.

I don't see how the action by this police department can be defended with any sort of logic.

originally posted by: Subaeruginosa
Its as clear as day that the 2 things that cause a high rate of gun violence are firstly the population density, then how high the gun ownership rate is.

No, it's as clear as day that how high the gun ownership rate by criminals is what increases the rate of gun violence dramatically. Funny thing is, illegally owned firearms aren't accounted for in statistics because it is an unknowable variable.