So it's a total non-story once you dig into it, and the article is just an opportunistic play to beat the "guns bad" and "police bad" drum at the same time. Ba

So it's a total non-story once you dig into it, and the article is just an opportunistic play to beat the "guns bad" and "police bad" drum at the same time. Basically, the guns you can buy new at any store in the US are by and large identical to those that the police use. When a police department replaces their equipment, they can either destroy their old firearms (and many do) or they can recoup some cost by having a retailer bulk purchase these old guns from them to be graded, inventoried, and resold on the legal secondhand market. Police departments can get a slight discount on their new equipment when they do this, and private civilian gun owners can buy these used firearms for cheaper than a brand new example of the same model. The FBC/NICS background check and purchase paperwork for buying a firearm in the US doesn't change regardless if it's a new or used gun. I don't see how this practice is particularly relevant in a country where we manufacture and import over 10 million of firearms a year. If it makes you feel warm and fuzzy, you can mandate that all police firearms go straight to the incinerator once they're done with them. But the amount of guns you'd be pulling off of the market in that case is an utterly insignificant rounding error in terms of the broader availability of firearms. If anything, you're helping Glock and Smith & Wesson's bottom line a little by forcing more civilian buyers to opt for new production vs Police trade-in used.