# Do police test the guns that people turn in for $$$, "no questions asked"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 4, 2006, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385 "2006-08-04T20:33:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2006, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/41 "2006-08-06T23:35:35Z")
[QUOTE=Una Persson] From what I understand, nothing prevents one from doing this, and it has been done - a gun store locally sells used guns, some of them as low as $49 or so, and I personally know someone who bought one old .30-.30 for about $50 and turned it in for quite a bit more. He didn’t do any more than 1 because it felt unethical to him. [/QUOTE] That reminds me of the married woman who only had one extramarrital lover at a time 'cause she didn’t want to cheat… Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/42 "2006-08-07T00:16:44Z")
[QUOTE=Crafter\_Man] Hi-Point? You paid too much. [/QUOTE] Sorry to hijack, but why are they so cheap? I mainly got it as a plinker, but I’ve fired 3 boxes though it, it hasn’t jammed yet or anything. I was considering opening a “critique my cheap-ass pistol” thread. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/43 "2006-08-07T02:54:36Z")
[QUOTE=yabob] Which leads to a question I always have about this things - never mind replicas, what’s to stop me from simply buying the cheapest new gun I can find, taking it around to the police station and getting $200 for it? Why can’t I get an incredibly cheap Phoenix Arms piece of trash and get over twice what I paid for it? [/QUOTE] My earlier reply re: replicas is just as true with “el cheapo crap guns” subsituted for “replica”, FWIW. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/44 "2006-08-07T14:26:54Z")
[QUOTE=ExTank] Some of the stuff I’ve seen cops do on shooting ranges would turn your hair white and your shorts brown. … in my experience, cops with guns are only slightly better than chimps with nitro. [/QUOTE] Wait, you know cops who actually spend time on the range? I used “trained professional” in hopes that **Una** ’s KC cops were closer to that ideal than my town’s. [QUOTE=Una] If a cop boasting about how he picked up a $400 rifle for free and how that’s a perk of the job isn’t at least unseemly to you, then I really don’t know what else to say, as we won’t have a meeting of the minds on this subject. [/quote] “Unseemly,” sure. “Better than forming a burglary ring, like the son of a friend, or regularly shaking down motorists, stealing evidence that still had a chain of custody, dealing coke, or taking bribes, the practices that got our entire force arrested or fired about 25 years ago (one of those “climate of corruption” things),” well, my expectations ain’t high. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/45 "2006-08-07T15:02:25Z")
They recently did a gun buyback program in Boston. They gave out $200 gift cards to Target for a working gun. The cops at the Boston police stations would check the gun to see that it was operable. (I don’t know what this entails, but I don’t think they were firing them.) I know that there are lots of gun dealers and collectors who used this as an opportunity to clean out thier junk guns. Any junky, unoperable or barely operable parts guns aren’t worth nearly $200. The joke is that they give the gift cards to their wives as justification for their gun hobbies. I’m fairly certain that no testing was done on the guns, and that they are destroyed. Local radio talk hosts were very critical of the program for not testing the guns. The only good thing about the program is that it was privately funded. It’s a stupid, wasteful and pointless exercise, but at least it’s not my money their wasting. Regarding the testing: What would be the point? Let’s say you get a handgun in via the program. You test it and learn that it’s the infamous gun you’ve been searching for in a string of murders. So what? How are you better off now that you have the gun? You don’t know who turned it in. Maybe it’ll have some prints on it, but that’s doubtful. Even if it does, it doesn’t prove anything. How would having a weapon obtained as evidence through the program be helpful to any open case? ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/46 "2006-08-07T19:48:14Z")
[QUOTE=Debaser] The cops at the Boston police stations would check the gun to see that it was operable. (I don’t know what this entails, but I don’t think they were firing them.) [/QUOTE] I certainly hope they’re not test firing guns that were just handed over by the general public. Only a gunsmith can verify if any gun is in firable condition, especially older guns that predate the higher pressure smokeless powder loads used today. Just randomly firing random handguns is asking for disaster. Never fire anything you don’t know is in good working order, ever. I shudder to think how many of those guns being passed over the table are loaded and what could happen… If it were me working there, everyone can just set the gun down waaaay over there, and I’ll be by to check it out when you’re nicely away from it, thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/47 "2006-08-07T20:44:04Z")
I wonder if the people who do these gun buybacks have the legal authority to do so. Doing pistol transfers requires a FFL and the attendant paperwork. Police or not, this is a purchase program, not a confiscation program, and as no crimes are being committed, why are the police exempt from this requirement? How is any party doing gun buybacks exempt from this requirement? Also, if someone finds a nice pistol and keeps it for themselves, does that not make it an illegal transfer? For all the big talk about reducing crime, it seems to me that we are discussing criminal activity in and of itself. ---
**Author:** ![Dag\_Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@Dag\_Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dag_Otto)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/48 "2006-08-08T18:28:41Z")
[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF] Doing pistol transfers requires a FFL and the attendant paperwork. [/QUOTE] Is this true? I thought it wasn’t required for private transfers. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/49 "2006-08-08T20:25:49Z")
[QUOTE=Dag Otto] Is this true? I thought it wasn’t required for private transfers. [/QUOTE] Not as long as it is intrastate. The Feds have no Constitutional authority over transfers that occur between non-felon adults within a state (since their regulatory authority comes from an extention of the 14th Amendment). Most states at least require that the parties record the purchase or transfer of a firearm, though. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/50 "2006-08-08T20:31:23Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] …their regulatory authority comes from an extention of the 14th Amendment… [/QUOTE] Er, that should be the Commerce Clause. I don’t know where the 14th Amendment came from–post-prandial retardation, I guess. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![catsix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@catsix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/catsix)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2006, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/51 "2006-08-08T22:18:43Z")
> [@](#): > > **Dag Otto** said: > Is this true? I thought it wasn’t required for private transfers. As far as I am aware, all handgun transfers in PA must go through an FFL with the paperwork except for transfer from spouse to spouse. Private transfer of long guns in PA does not require an FFL to handle the transfer. Which would make a ‘no questions asked, you throw a handgun in the bin and we give you 200$’ an illegal transfer here. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/52 "2006-08-10T10:21:04Z")
[QUOTE=Eleusis] $200? I just paid $140 for a brand new Hi-Point 9mm Luger. [/QUOTE] Duck! Actually, you may have a decent plinker. From what I hear on gun boards, it’s about 50/50 with half saying total trash and half saying fun cheap guns. Of course, never put yourself in a position where you’d actually have to rely on it. If you want something good in that price range you can get a makarov. As for FFL transfers, it varies greatly by state. In Ohio, you can legally transfer a gun to any adult not known to be a felon in a private sale. ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/53 "2006-08-10T13:13:17Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] If you want something good in that price range you can get a makarov. [/QUOTE] Ammo can be a pain in the butt to find for some of the cheaper Makarovs out there. I almost bought one about 7 years ago for what looked like a great price, around $75 I think, until I realized that it was chambered in some funky Egyptian 9mm round that would make it hard to find cheap ammo. At least with the Hi-Point you can easily find parabellum rounds. ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/54 "2006-08-10T13:17:17Z")
Now that I think more about it, I think this was chambered in 9mm Largo, the Spanish round, not Eqyptian. I think the gun itself was from Egypt. Either way, I took a pass since I was looking for a shooter and not a shelf piece at the time. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2006, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385/55 "2006-08-10T14:17:30Z")
Most makarovs are 9x18, which you can even find at sporting good stores, but any decent ammo supplier (where you should be getting stuff from anyway) will have plenty of it. It’s among the cheapest, if not the cheapest, pistol round to shoot. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-police-test-the-guns-that-people-turn-in-for-no-questions-asked/367385.md?page=2)