Four takeaways from our investigation into police agencies selling their guns

About nine times a day for two decades, a gun used in a crime was traced back to its original owner: a law enforcement agency.

A joint investigation by CBS News, The Trace and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting found at least 52,000 such incidents and identified more than 140 police departments that sell or trade their guns, allowing dealers to resell them.

Here is an overview of the main findings of the survey. You can read and watch the full investigation here.

Police weapons resold or traded end up in the hands of criminals

Law enforcement agencies sell and trade in their old duty weapons – often to cut costs when upgrading. Side effect: tens of thousands of these weapons have ended up in the hands of criminals.

They have been used in shootings, domestic violence incidents and other violent crimes, according to records obtained from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and hundreds of U.S. police agencies .

Internal ATF records show at least 52,529 police weapons have been discovered at crime scenes since 2006, the first year of data available from the government.

CBS News reporters surveyed state and local law enforcement agencies from coast to coast and found that at least 143 agencies resold their guns between 2006 and 2022. That’s about 90% of agencies that responded.

Police sell their guns even at buyback events to get other guns off the street

Most of the police departments that were reselling or trading in their guns were the same ones that regularly hold gun buyback events that they say are aimed at reducing the number of guns on the street.

The Philadelphia police boast on their website that they have collected 825 weapons for buyback since 2021.

But records obtained as part of the CBS News investigation show the agency has resold at least 886 of its agents’ former service weapons over the past two decades.

The Newark Police Department held a buyback in 2021, offering $250 for each firearm. People surrendered 146 weapons.

“Without a doubt, 146 fewer guns on our streets means less gun violence, fewer victims of gun violence and less risk of suicide or death,” said Public Safety Director Brian O’Hara , in a publication on YouTube.

Five years earlier, the Newark agency had resold more than five times that number of guns, or nearly 1,000. One ended up in Pittsburgh, where police seized it from a criminal convicted in 2019 after he allegedly fired more than a dozen shots in a neighborhood and then led officers on a foot chase.

A Newark police spokesman said the guns were exchanged as a cost-saving measure under a previous administration.

The data behind this investigation is data that Congress voted to keep secret

In 2003, Congress passed the Tiahrt Amendment. Named after the lawmaker who introduced it, Tiahrt prohibits the ATF from releasing most information about weapons used in crimes to the public.

The ATF cited the Tiahrt Amendment in denying a public records request filed in 2017 by our reporting partners on this project, Reveal of the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Reveal continued. In 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that ATF must disclose certain summary statistical information.

Limited records released during that litigation showed that more than 52,000 guns used in crimes were traced to law enforcement. A small sample of the underlying data showed that at least 800 old firearms from different agencies turned up at crime scenes.

Some police departments are taking a different route and destroying their old weapons

Federal law enforcement is legally required to destroy their used weapons. State and local agencies make their own decisions.

Most sell or trade them, but not all.

In Seattle, police shut down the handgun trade around 2016.

“If we sell them, we just don’t know where these guns might end up,” Police Chief Adrian Diaz said. “We don’t want to contribute to the problem.”

Indianapolis Police Chief Christopher Bailey told CBS News that his agency has a history of trading in weapons, but would consider changing that policy after a recent shooting involving an old police weapon sold by a sheriff’s office in California.

“I don’t want a weapon that we own to be used violently against another person,” Bailey said.

After CBS News Minnesota showed our findings to Minneapolis police officials, Police Chief Brian O’Hara said his department would change its policy.

“I don’t want us to be in a situation where a weapon that was once used by police here ends up being used in a crime, or in an act of violence against a person, or even to shoot a police officer.” , O’Hara said. “So in the future we are not going to sell weapons at all.”