NC Agencies Running Out of Space to Store Guns That Can’t be Destroyed

A 2013 North Carolina law prohibits law enforcement agencies from destroying firearms taken from criminals or recovered at crime scenes. And the state’s largest municipal law enforcement agencies are running out of storage for guns they don’t want to sell.

A joint report by the Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News and Observer says that the 10 largest agencies in the Tarheel State are storing more than 74,000 guns. The state’s largest agency, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, is storing more than 25,000 guns.

Prior to the 2013 law, once a relevant criminal case was finished, firearms that could not be returned to their owners could be destroyed.

“A lot of departments don’t want to sell them back into circulation because they will see them again used in other crimes,” said Fred Baggett, a lobbyist for the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police.

Police departments in some North Carolina cities sell the guns.

High Point has sold 1,041 since 2014. Guns confiscated by High Point police are transferred to a Kentucky-based business Bud’s Police Supply FFL through auction services and sold through open bidding, according to spokesperson Victoria Ruvio. The High Point Police Department traces all guns that come in, and they have no known instance of a firearm being sold and then returning back into their possession, Ruvio wrote.

Sen. Danny Britt, a Robeson County Republican known for bridging bi-partisan divides on criminal justice reform issues, suggests that the agencies that don’t want to sell the guns trade them to agencies that will.

“Seventy-four thousand guns could buy quite a few squad cars for a sheriff’s department in my district,” he said.