A version of this essay appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on June 30, 2024.
It’s easier to get a gun in America than it is to get rid of a gun.
Even gun buybacks and incentivized gun surrender events can be problematic, because law enforcement agencies have a record of putting the guns right back on the market. Just as it is unthinkable for police to sell back heroin from a drug bust, we have to insist that law enforcement agencies stop selling weapons. It is a violation of their pledge to serve and protect. We’ve all heard of the black market, but it has become clear that there is an entire underground “blue market” of cops selling guns.
In a bombshell report, a recent study revealed that more than 52,000 guns used in crimes over a sixteen-year period can be tracked back to police. At least 145 law enforcement agencies have sold firearms, which have later been used in thousands of shootings all over the country.
Recently released records show 87,000 firearms have been resold in the past two decades by 67 law enforcement agencies – a stunning number that is also believed to be much higher because many agency records are incomplete or redacted or inaccessible.
I know this firsthand, because we’ve been organizing gun buybacks around the country that too often have become gun-sellbacks by police. I’ve been a Philadelphia-based organizer for over two decades, and most recently have been concentrating on gun violence, as the founder of RAWtools Philly.
We get our name from flipping “WAR” around, and that’s our mission – to turn guns into garden tools and build a better world. We released a book on gun violence entitled Beating Guns, and did a 40-city tour, chopping a gun each night in a different US town. I’ve met families in the midst of tragedy, one in particular I remember where the father killed his wife and himself and left the surviving kids with all his guns… which we chopped up. One woman I met had her brother living with her who died of natural causes. As she packed up his possessions, she found a bunch of guns and reached out to us to destroy them. We’re now officially listed in the 211 network so if there is a crisis or emergency, say a mom finds a handgun in her teenager’s room and doesn’t know what to do… we get a call. One family I met had just moved to Philadelphia and had a family member who thought they needed an assault rifle in Philly, so he bought one and had it delivered to their house. It was literally dropped off on the porch, and they had no idea it was coming. So, they Googled “How to get rid of a gun” and it pulled us up at RAWtools. I made them a piece of art for their kid’s room from the AR-15.
But it’s not as easy as it should be to get rid of a gun. And the blue market is not making things better.
In Georgia, I helped organize a gun buyback, where the police told us all the guns that were turned in would be put back on the market according to state law. I thought I misunderstood, so I asked if we could simply make a donation to help law enforcement with any expenses related to destroying the guns, and he said they are not allowed to destroy the guns… only resell them.
At least nine states have laws mandating police to sell seized guns or trade in their own when buying new ones. Hundreds of police guns are currently for sale online on forums like Gunbroker.
North Carolina is one of the states where law enforcement agencies are not permitted to destroy firearms, and they are literally running out of space for the piles of guns in their arsenal. One North Carolina police chief, Patrice Andrews in Durham, said she had to lease a 20,000 square foot warehouse to store the 10,000 guns they have possession of, many of which are not even needed for court but are not allowed to be destroyed. “We are really bursting at the seams, which is sad because it’s the state of the world that we are in” said Andrews. And when asked if she wishes they could just destroy the guns this was her response: ““I wish that we could… I honestly wish that we could just take them out and just destroy them.” Attorney General Josh Stein says these laws have turned law enforcement agencies into “weapons warehouses.”
Lord, have mercy.
To further complicate things, The New York Times exposed one of the largest contractors for the purpose of destroying firearms, Gunbusters… and they were actually taking apart surrendered guns and selling the parts – bringing in $90,000 a week from sales of gun parts from the 200,000 guns they have brought in. From the Times: “Communities across the US are fueling a secondary arms market by giving seized and surrendered guns to disposal services that destroy one part and resell the rest.”
So, it’s hard to know how to do it right – unless of course you chop up the guns upon surrender, which is exactly what we do.
Then you may remember, after a mass shooting in Kentucky state officials announced that the assault rifle used in the shooting would be auctioned off. It boggles the mind. A gun used to kill 5 people and injure 8 others, including 2 police officers will not be destroyed… it will be resold. Thankfully, we have been in touch with the Louisville Mayor’s office and hope to work together to honor all the lives lost, by destroying that AR-15 used to kill them.
The Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) has been seriously limited by laws like the Tiahrt Amendment that do not allow information on crime guns or irresponsible gun dealers to be made public. The gun lobby has worked hard to hide any records and research, just like the tobacco companies that did not want any information released that could show that tobacco-use causes cancer – not good for the cigarette companies.
Even inside the ATF there are folks who have deep concerns. Scot Thomasson, a former ATF division chief believes that police departments that resell firearms are violating their obligation to protect the public. “Taxpayers are buying firearms that are then resold for pennies on the dollar and ultimately ending up in criminals’ hands, Thomasson said. “It is absolutely ridiculous.”
Some of these blue market guns were sold as law enforcement officers received new guns and upgrades in weaponry. Other guns became the property of police from gun buybacks, but rather than destroying them, the police put them back on the market and made money off of them. And Philadelphia is one of the cities that is part of the problem.
In Philadelphia alone, the District Attorney’s office worked with researcher David Blake Johnson to aggregate disturbing data from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office and Pennsylvania State Police showing that 165,717 guns have been seized by law enforcement (many of which may have been sold)… and nearly 13 million guns were sold and transferred in Pennsylvania over the same period of roughly 20 years, respectively.
Philadelphia City Council celebrates having collected 825 guns in buybacks since 2021. What they don’t tell us is that many of those guns were put back on the market, with law enforcement making money from sales. Even with incomplete records, we now know that Philadelphia Police resold at least 886 guns over the past two decades, including 85 in 2021-2022. The number is likely much higher. Some departments added more guns to the market than they removed in buybacks. Thomasson is right, “It is absolutely ridiculous.” And it is absolutely avoidable. It’s time to demand that Philadelphia destroy all surrendered and confiscated guns on the spot. And we are ready to make it happen at RAWtools.
Last month, I teamed up with Philadelphia Mural Arts and hosted events around the City of Philadelphia where we brought our mobile gun-chopping trailer and portable forge so that we could chop guns and turn them into garden tools in different Philly neighborhoods impacted by gun violence. And for these events we offered “Groceries for Guns” –incentivizing gun surrenders with $250 food credit for each donated gun. It has been so effective, we are going to keep it going throughout the year, ultimately installing pieces of public art that incorporate chopped up Philadelphia guns in the artwork. Sadly, the only way we can do that is by doing it without the support of police since they would not destroy the guns. We have created a protocol that is safe and legal but currently operates without the help of law enforcement, precisely because we want the guns to be destroyed rather than resold. But we would love to see police join us in destroying guns rather than selling them.
There are thousands of Philadelphia guns that are unaccounted for, and need to be destroyed. We know that Philadelphia officers have sold confiscated firearms, both legally and illegally, and now thanks to this groundbreaking report, we have some of the receipts. Thanks to a District Attorney who is committed to exposing corruption, we even saw one Sheriff’s deputy arrested for selling guns to an FBI informant. The US Attorney’s office says two of the guns he sold were used in the shooting at Roxborough High School.
In a country where two-thirds of Americans choose not to have a gun, we still have more guns than people. The United States has about 5% of the world’s population but almost half of the world’s guns. We are producing guns at a rate of 9.5 million per year, 26,000 per day, over 1000 guns an hour, 1 gun every 3 seconds. And where there are more guns there are more suicides, and homicides, and accidents…. Americans want change. A stunning number of US citizens want to see common sense gun laws that will save lives – 90% of us… including 80% of gunowners who are concerned about gun violence. Meanwhile, our hope is to make it easier to get rid of unwanted guns, and make sure police don’t put them back on the market. They have to be immediately destroyed. That last part is clutch.
For over 10 years, our RAWtools network has been destroying firearms as they are surrendered, making it impossible to sell or reuse any gun parts.
Some of the guns we’ve destroyed were used in suicide, which accounts for over half of the lives lost each year to guns.
Here’s one story. A man in Philadelphia lost his wife to suicide, and called RAWtools Philly hoping that we could destroy the gun she used to take her life. In his grief the man simply wanted to know that the gun she used to take her life would be destroyed and not put back on the market. I contacted the detective involved in the case, who listened intently and asked good questions. He seemed to be very interested in the reasonable request of this grieving widower. So we did it. The detective ran it through the ranks, and eventually brought the firearm into the shop where we destroyed it. He marveled out how easy and sensible it was… it took about 5 minutes.
Then he said to me that he had hundreds of guns in their office, hundreds. Many of them, like the one we chopped, were not needed for court. They are not crime guns – they were used in suicide, or they belonged to someone who struggled with mental health and were taken before a crime was committed and now belong to law enforcement. As I talked to the detective, it became clear to me that we need a new process in Philadelphia and around the country in order to decommission guns, and many police are ready to jump on board even as some remain complacent or complicit.
This recent study makes it clear how urgently change is needed.
When police sell guns, they are not making us safer. They are also not making themselves safer. Guns are the #1 cause of death of officers killed in the line of duty. But they are also the #1 cause of death of American children, more than cancer or car accidents. Guns are killing us at the rate of 120 lives a day, over 40,000 lives per year. In my lifetime, we’ve lost more lives to guns in America than the combined deaths of all the lives lost in war throughout US history. And here in the City of Love, we have been setting new records of gun deaths, over 500 a year… which is more than we have had in the history of our City. Our theme for last month’s events is “A Better World Is Possible.” It doesn’t have to be this way.
Every time we turn a gun into a garden tool we are declaring – all things can be made new. Metal that has been crafted to kill can be reimagined and repurposed. And what is true of metal is also true of policies.
