Posted on 03/13/2025 7:45:11 AM PDT by marktwain
On February 27, 2025, the Kansas Senate voted 39 to 1 to pass a police and firearms sales reform bill. The bill allows police to sell/transfer (trade) forfeited firearms to a federally licensed firearms dealer. From legiscan.com:
AN ACT concerning the Kansas standard asset seizure and forfeiture act; relating to the disposition of forfeited property; authorizing the sale or transfer of forfeited firearms to a licensed federal firearms dealer;
The Kansas legislature appears to be correcting a weird quirk in Kansas law, K.S.A 60-4117 (5)(b) allowed for four ways to dispose of forfeited firearms:
b) When firearms are forfeited under this act, the firearms, in the discretion of the seizing agency, shall be destroyed, used within the seizing agency for official purposes, traded to another law enforcement agency for use within such agency, sold or transferred to a properly licensed federal firearms dealer or given to the Kansas bureau of investigation for law enforcement, testing, comparison or destruction by the Kansas bureau of investigation forensic laboratory.
In 2014, Kansas enacted a law requiring police to auction off guns that had been used in crimes. In the first six years of the law, in Wichita, Kansas, the police department received $196,000, as reported in the Wichita Eagle in 2021:
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
>>Selling forfeited firearms, instead of paying to have them destroyed, makes perfect sense.
“Mostly” perfect sense, except for creating a perverse incentive for the government to seize firearms for re-sale.
The concept of civil asset forfeiture is an affront to the rule of law and the Constitution.
Most firearms are sized for other reason.
Civil asset forfeiture.
“old or transferred to a properly licensed federal firearms dealer or given to the Kansas bureau of investigation for law enforcement, testing, comparison or destruction by the Kansas bureau of investigation forensic laboratory”. ‘Testing and comparison’, interesting.
to get the best prices they should auction them off.
My experience is the people put in charge of these programs are most interested in minimizing their cost in their time. They get paid the same, no matter what the guns are sold for.
Therefore, they pick the easiest method to get rid of the guns at the least cost to them. This usually involves putting out a bid for the entire lot - a method that minimizes the price received by the government for the guns.
OK, as long as the person they were seized from has already had a trial and found guilty of whatever caused the police to seize the firearms in the first place.
Those are already being sold in Kansas.
This bill is about selling forfeited firearms from civil forfeiture. I believe it includes firearms given to the police as well.
The current law requires police to destroy the firearms rather than sell them.
Can you give me an example of what that means?
Take a look at the guns that people turn in to the sheriff. Pretty modest weapons. Nobody is going to toss an AR, .270 or a 1911 onto the table.
How amusing that the government goes through the charade of getting a weapon, only to see it back in citizen hands in a few weeks.
Take a look at the guns that people turn in to the sheriff. Pretty modest weapons. Nobody is going to toss an AR, .270 or a 1911 onto the table.
Sometimes widows turn in very expensive gun collections, which they do not want to deal with. They can be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
I have seen lots of expensive guns get turned into police. At a gun turn-in at Tucson, a person was offered thousands of dollars for a pristine Python 2 1/2 inch .357 magnum. The person insisted the gun be destroyed instead of taking the money.
How amusing that the government goes through the charade of getting a weapon, only to see it back in citizen hands in a few weeks.
Agreed. Sadly our county destroys the seized guns.
I went to a Sheriff’s auction of seized property a nearby state about 45 years ago. Dull, slow nothing of importance.
Suddenly just after noon something like an electric charge went through the buyers and they surged toward the gun table. As I watched a feeding frenzy took place as junk guns were bid up as much as new guns were being sold. And the buyer still had to fill out paperwork for it.
In my state, I talked with a man who had been to his brother’s pawn shop auction. He told me he wished he had loaded up every firearm he could get his hands on and took them to that auction. Again it was a feeding frenzy for the guns.
As I told my adult kids, “When I croak, DON’T SELL the guns to a gun dealer, get in touch with an auction house and have a public auction!”
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