Dori: Seattle’s plan to destroy handguns has no substance

Seattle’s latest plan to destroy all of its old police handguns may have hit a snag, and KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson says he knows why.

According to Dori, the plan to destroy the guns is the result of Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s habit of symbolism over substance. Alan Gottlieb with the gun rights group Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms agrees.

Related: Seattle’s plan to destroy Police weapons

“I was not surprised (by the plan to destroy police guns),” Gottlieb said. “But it’s a really stupid thing to do.”

The Seattle City Council passed a resolution to destroy all Seattle police sidearms once they age out, instead of selling them off to other law enforcement agencies. Mayor Murray said that his goal is to reduce the number of guns on the streets, and this is part of that mission.

“How do we reduce the number of guns when Congress won’t act, when state Legislatures often don’t act,” Murray recently told KIRO 7.

Gottlieb argues that the sentiment is off the mark. Destroying the guns won’t amount to much, and doesn’t address real problems, he said.

“That shows how ridiculous this is,” he told Dori. “It’s not about too many guns. It’s about too many violent criminals on our streets. Why doesn’t he address getting violent criminals off the streets instead of taking people’s guns away?”

“That would be substance, not symbolism,” Gottlieb added.

The snag

KIRO 7 reports that Seattle’s police union has raised an issue with the city’s new policy of destroying police guns once they are cycled out of use. The union has a contract with the city that states officers are allowed to buy weapons before the city does anything with them.

“Looks like a waste of city money and it looks like an ill-advised move that was done without regard for our collective bargaining agreement,” Seattle Police Officers Guild President Ron Smith told KIRO 7.

Smith further said that he has never heard of any instance when a former Seattle police gun was used in a crime.

The Seattle Police Department trades in about 100 guns each year. The trade in value for those Glock handguns is about $300 each — that adds up to about $30,000 in revenue from selling them off. When officers don’t opt to buy their own service weapons, the city trades them into Gunarama Wholesale. At least, it did before its new policy to destroy them was passed.

Dori figures that Seattle’s effort to destroy the guns barely amounts to a drop in the bucket. He estimates there are about 300 million guns in the United States. That means that Seattle’s 100 guns each year account for about 30,000th of a percent of all the guns in the country.

“And this is his idea of doing something,” Dori said.

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