Submitted 11 months ago by ch00f@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Do guns wear out? Do they end up in landfill? You always hear about guns being sold, but never about what happens to them at the end of their useful life.
They go into your bedroom drawer completely unsecured so your kid can steal and missuse it, as per the American way.
Gun heaven, where they can run around and frolic in the fields and enjoy the rest of their well deserved life.
The modern notion of “interchangeable parts” was developed for guns; they’re made to be maintained and repaired. Parts that wear out can be replaced. You can still get new replacement parts for guns made over a hundred years ago.
what happens to them at the end of their useful life.
When the gun buy back happened in Aus after the Port Arthur massacre they were just melted down and the steel was sold for scrap.
in germany you can trade old guns in at a dealer, and they decide if it’s still usable or not. then it gets recycled i believe.
As others have said for the most part with the advent of interchangeable parts guns don’t get beyond a state of repair often. Some probably do go to landfills but they’re metal and metals tend to be one of the few materials worth recycling. Other might be parted out if their damage is isolated to a few parts.
They do wear out eventually, but the end of their useful life is a whole crapload of rounds if they’re well-made, and most good guns can have parts replaced either by the user or by a smith, so you can keep them running a long time if you oil them and keep them relatively rust-free. If a gun is so messed up it can’t fire or if it fails catastrophically and blows up, if it’s truly and permanently at the end of its life, I think most folks do indeed throw them in the trash, assuming they have no historical value. Maybe disassemble them or cut them up with a hacksaw first. Once it stops being able to be a gun anymore, it’s just junk.
Technically I believe it is illegal to throw away a gun in the US because of it’s weapon status. That said, I’m sure it still happens. Guns, though, go on for a long time if properly maintained, and are often still in use even if they are not. Typically they’ll get repaired or turned into pieces of “art” and hung on the wall. In some cases they may get donated/sold to someone who works on guns for a living or a hobby. Mostly, they hang around and rust. All of this information is from my own experience growing up in the rural south, and YMMV depending on the area you are in and the moneyed status of the owner.
I’m unaware of any federal law on the mater (not really their jurisdiction) and check your own local law, but probably not. If anyone has a citation otherwise I’d be interested in reading it.
I wonder if it had been taken apart enough and/or hacksawed if it would still meet a definition of "gun" or "firearm".
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Depends on how it was disposed of. … and how well it’d maintained.
There’s plenty of 1-200 year old firearms that still work; and even as far back as the old west, firearms were meant to be kept up with replacement parts.
Now, that said there’s plenty of programs where you can turn in a firearm, no questions asked, and those are supposed to get destroyed. In the US, they’re frequently run by city cops to get guns off the street.
If you do find a firearm… call the cops. Nobody just “looses” a firearm. And, ah, don’t touch it. You don’t want your finger prints anywhere near it when they do get there. (Cops are dicks… and that gun probably has a body on it.)
Hyperreality@kbin.social 11 months ago
Sounds boring.
More fun: pop it in the bag of someone who's about to go to the airport.
neuropean@kbin.social 11 months ago
Ketchup won’t work, the color and texture are off. I bet if you ask nicely you can get some from your nearest meat shop if you tell them you want to make blood sausage. You’ll have to let the blood warm up before it’ll clot and dry on there though.
GONADS125@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Someone did that to my grandma with a huge knife in her bag. My mom was eventually able to convince them someone put it in there, asking them what possible reason would this old lady have to smuggle a giant knife.
I think it was either just to get rid of it, or to see if she got thru, and maybe they’d try to take it back out of her bag on the other side of TSA. We gave her a lot of crap for it.
NotSpez@lemm.ee 11 months ago
This comment right here, officer
cmoney@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Years ago a co-worker/friend thought it funny to make a thin metal outline of a gun and place this metal in a book of another co-worker headed to the airport, friends like this who needs enemies?