My point is that to sell them to the public there is a cost associated with it. If it is overall less expensive to sell them great. But it entails a lot more than just having a tag sale.
My guess is that it’s a lot less expensive, overall, to just melt them and re-use them.
While that’s not the answer a lot of people want to hear, it’s probably the truth.
Scrap steel is worth about .03 a pound. Each weighs about 2.5 lbs empty. 100,000 1911’s would be worth about $7500.
Each is worth about 8 cents in scrap.
I have no idea at all whether these are worn out guns or are serviceable.
Although it would never in a million years figure this out, the gov’t could “consign” 950 guns @ $250 ea to any of a thousand dealers, giving them 50 guns for their effort. I suspect the guns are worth $500 each as is how is but more than a few might be worth $1500. Well north of $1K, anyway.
Each dealer sends the government 950 * $250 = $237,500. within 180 days.
Each dealer sells the guns and pays taxes on the profits which would probably average $250 per gun after some refurb. That’s an add’l 950 * 60 figured at 25% or $14,250. So each batch of guns is worth about $250K.
There’s $25 MM worth of guns there. Although it would be necessary to subtract the $672,000 for the study of how best to market them from the total receipts.
I’ve seen the Army’s destruction process. After being dropped through “Captain Crunch” (the shredder), the scrap is inspected and anything—ANYTHING, even a front sight post—that might be salvageable is torched so that nothing can be salvaged. They have people sorting the scrap on conveyor belts and others with acetylene torches working at this level of destruction.
There’s no way Uncle Sam can avoid incurring a loss on destruction compared to just selling them to the surplus market.