Who all destroys dangerous junkers?

[WestKentucky]

I know it happens, and generally for good reason. Who all has destroyed a weapon intentionally and how did you do it?

I have destroyed 2. One a Ducktown TN 410 derringer which was taken apart and thrown into the deep bits of Barkley lake. The other was a 9mm Bryco Jennings that spit bullets out sideways, string fired from time to time, and once did so when the slide was released to load it. That one got flattened with a sledge for a bit before finding a scrap pile.

 

[MErl]

Never had a reason to myself but I suspect the standard nowadays is to sell them for a gift card at a "buyback".

 

[Hunterdad]

Bought a used 870 about 10 years ago that had a bent receiver. No idea how it happened, but I cut the receiver in half with an angle grinder and scrapped it.

 

[redneck2]

Wow. Keep those for buy backs.

 

[barnbwt]

An 870 with otherwise useful parts is worth more than most buybacks would give you. Even Jennings's can be parted out for a good portion of their worth to people who would otherwise flatten theirs. There is actually very little reason to ever destroy an entire firearm, rather than just the parts that are the problem.

This:

Can be repaired into this:


I once thought that buy backs were funny and somehow deprived the anti's of resources, but now I just see them as enablers of ignorance. Why legitimize the most idiotic manifestation of their warped worldview? For a handful of sheckles?

TCB

 

[Dframe]

Our department used to cut the reciever in half with a cutting torch.

 

[LeonCarr]

I hacksawed two AR lowers that were WAY out of spec.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

 

[MikeJackmin]

A Carcano barreled receiver with a dangerous crack in it is now resting at the bottom of a farm pond somewhere. The other parts all found good homes.

 

[zdc1775]

I cut and welded up a couple of barrels that I shot out back when I was shooting F Class in high school. More for the practice at welding than anything else though. Does that count?

 

[1911 guy]

Agree with salvaging useable parts. I've ditched a lot of parts over the years, and turned one ancient milsurp with no sentimental value into a crowbar.

 

[WestKentucky]

Both I have destroyed had no parts which weren't questionable at best, and had crap for a parts market anyway. As far as buy backs go...I live in Kentucky and have never seen a buy back in the last 29 years. Not to say it hasn't happened here but I haven't heard about one.

 

[bikerdoc]

A lorcin and a Jennings that belonged to my uncle were taken apart and scattered way out in the Atlantic Ocean.

 

[tightgroup tiger]

I chopped a 8mm barrel that had a dangerous crack in the chamber area and also did the same to a 6.5 Jap Arisaka that someone had ruined buy trying to braze a firing pin in the bolt. The headspace was also so far off and it had been bubba'ed so bad that there were no good parts left on it so it needed chopped up in little pieces so no one tried to shoot it.

When my father brought it home from WW2, someone tried to work on it. It wasn't my father, he wouldn't have known enough about it to try. He told me he knew it was basically junk when he brought it home but someone apparently thought they could fix it. It ended up back at the farm and layed around until I was old enough to realize how dangerous it was. I cut it up in pieces and stuffed it down a ground hog hole.

 

[natman]

We had a local gunsmith who had an AMT Backup 380 cast in clear lucite as a paperweight.

 

[csspecs]

I have yet to do it. But should I have a compromised firearm action, I'd strip all parts and sell as repair kit, someone likely needs one or more of them. Then I'd saw it on an angle and photograph it with serial showing.

Then toss in the appropriate scrap bin. With littering fines what they are your better scraping or trashing then tossing in any body of water.

If I had one that was unreliable that I could not repair, I'd either part it, or sell it with a warning that it was a problem gun.

 

[rcmodel]

I cut up & melted a S/S sawed-off shotgun with my dad's gas cutting-torch a friend chopped off in HS shop class when I was about 16 years old.
But only after the county sheriff got wind of it from all his bragging and started poking around.

And my buddy crapped his pants and decided I had been right from the get-go when I told him not to do it.


After that?
I started fixing guns rather then destroying them.
I think that was probably the last one for me.

Oh!
I do have an ancient Stevens .22 bolt-action receiver in the Junque box I sawed in half with my band saw 30 years ago.

But only because it came to me with a cut-off pistol-grip stock, and about a 10" barrel I wanted to save for another project.
The barrel has been made into several reloading Case Gage's now.
And the bolt & trigger parts are still in the Junque box, in case I ever need them.

But I won't.


Oh!
There might or not might even be a couple of 106mm Recoilless rifle 'Blue' training rounds, and maybe no more then two 40mm Thump-Gun training rounds, and 3 or 4 81mm & 4.2" Mortar shells in the bottom of the deepest, most silted-in federal lakes in Kansas???

But, I don't know nothing about any of that!

That's my story, and I'm sticking too it!

rc

 

[Rio Laxas]

I ground through the top strap on a couple of Rohm RG-22s with a bench grinder and buried them. They were found among my great-grandmother's things and were in pretty rough shape.

 

[PavePusher]

Why all the shenanigans with cutting/beating/littering?

Simply disassemble, put the bad parts in any recycling collection point, and sell or scrap the good parts.

How is this difficult to figure out? If your car engine was broken, would you cut it in half, or throw it in a lake?

:banghead:

 

[LeonCarr]

I wanted to make sure nobody else had to jack with 'em .

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

 

[Grmlin]

Destroyed many AK's during/after the Gulf War in 1991, does that count? Initially we were told that if we welded the breach and barrel we could bring them home, that didn't happen.

 

[JTHunter]

Even after cutting up the guns, why don't you take them to a recycling location to be used as scrap iron instead of drowning them or sticking them in an animal burrow?

 

[WestKentucky]

My thoughts on the topic of recycling the metal is this...a heavy handgun weighs in around 3 pounds. A rifle weighs just a bit more once you remove wood and plastic. At $200 a ton you would get $0.30 for that mangled gun that some guy at the scrap yard might spend a week on trying to make work and in the process could hurt/kill himself or others. It's worth a hell of a lot more than thirty cents to know that the gun is in a place where it won't be hurting or killing anything or anybody cause the fishies aren't going to reassemble the gun and mount an offensive on the guy in the bass boat.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I had a weld fail where the slide rail joined the barrel trunion on a cheap polymer framed gun. (One of the last Grendel P10s made after Kelgren had left the company, and not as well made as the first P10 I owned).

I stripped all reusable parts from the frame and boxed them off to Numrich Arms Gun Parts for assessment. As I recall the deal: they sent me a check covering what they thought they might clear minus a profit margin plus re-enbursing my postage cost; if I sent the check back they would return the parts on their dime. I cashed the check. The offered amount was much more than tossing it in the river would have gained me.

I have given up on another gun and trashed it completely because I felt it was unsafe. Literally disassembled and in the trash. In hindsight that is not the best way. Tossing it in the river or lake is not a good idea either, because if it is snagged by a fisherman, it could end up being investigated as an abandoned crime gun and waste tax dollars and time.

I cut up & melted a S/S sawed-off shotgun with my dad's gas cutting-torch a friend chopped off in HS shop class when I was about 16 years old.

Ouch. You can buy sawed-off shotguns at the auction house that handles police auctions of confiscated or forfeited firearms. Well, you can buy the receiver, buttstock and forearm of a confiscated or forfeited sawed-off shotgun. The police only trash the barrel, which after all is the only illegal part. The bids often start at $5 or $10 and the auction house has an FFL and does the 4473 and TICS check.

 

[Double_J]

I remember seeing one gun get cut into lots of little pieces. It was a K frame smith and wesson with an L frame barrel welded onto the receiver. The cylinder was so out of time it wouldn't hold true, and the entire thing was used as a hammer apparently due to the number of dings and dents.

We took that thing to a local gunsmith and had a demonstration of his "NEW" plasma torch. we wound up putting that stack of scrap in the recycle bin the next day. I remember the look on the gunsmiths face when he saw that revolver.

I did see a guy trying to use a welded up ring of fire pistol. I did stop him from shooting it and hurting himself and everyone at he range. He found it in his father/uncle/other family members things after the funeral. Needless to say we had him take it to the local PD to get it destroyed. We saw him a few weeks later and his response was one of thanks, he went out and bought a Beretta .380 to use up the ammo he had left over.

 

[barnbwt]

"If your car engine was broken, would you cut it in half, or throw it in a lake?"
Ah, but guns are *special* and can and will hurt people by virtue of their existence, so they require additional scrutiny

TCB