After pushback, Michigan State Police will begin using a scrap metal-processing facility in Jackson to dispose of firearms collected in gun buyback programs, instead of using a firm that was reselling gun parts, Detroit News reports. The state police agency announced the new disposal program Tuesday after a New York Times investigation found GunBusters, the Missouri-based gun disposal firm contracted by the department, repurposed parts that were resold as kits and could be used to reassemble a weapon.
“This new method will improve public safety by ensuring all parts of a firearm are destroyed, never to be used again, and continue to meet the ATF’s acceptable destruction procedures, as we always have,” MSP's director, Col. James F. Grady II, said in a statement. The new procedure will cost some additional money for transportation of the firearms and recordkeeping, but the agency will not be charged for the guns' destruction. Instead, the pulverized metal will be melted down for flat roll steel coils, the agency said.
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