Any citations for this? I certainly can't find any.
Heinous only appears in the IC once, and not in this context.
But, back to the original question, I suspect that "guns used in serious crimes" are destroyed because they belonged to a person who is now a felon, and can't own it. The PD doesn't want the overhead of dealing with it, so they send it to the shredder with the rest of the no-longer-needed evidence.
Having a 'Friend' to check the number on the 'Hot List' before I buy comes in handy, but he says about anyone can call the police and have a serial run on the 'Hot List', it will depend on how lazy your local PD is on how quick they get back to you.
The only exemption he could think of is if you engraved your SSN or name in the firearm.
He also says the Judges in Indiana can pretty much do anything they want, they have BROAD range of power judges in other states don't have.
Not sure if this could happen with today's technology, but... A bad guy shoots someone, say, in Little Rock and doesn't get caught. He moves to Indy, shoots another person using the same weapon, but gets caught. Time passes and the gun goes to auction, is purchased, sold a few times through legal transfers and the new buyer relocates to Little Rock. For whatever reason the buyer and his gun collection come under scrutiny. Is it possible, through ballistics, that the new owner could become a "person of interest" in an old case in Arkansaw?
Depending on part of the country and political leadership, reselling or otherwise transferring is too much of a hassle, and storage fills up fast. Can't transfer them to private parties, can't store them indefinitely, only one real solution.
Not sure if this could happen with today's technology, but... A bad guy shoots someone, say, in Little Rock and doesn't get caught. He moves to Indy, shoots another person using the same weapon, but gets caught. Time passes and the gun goes to auction, is purchased, sold a few times through legal transfers and the new buyer relocates to Little Rock. For whatever reason the buyer and his gun collection come under scrutiny. Is it possible, through ballistics, that the new owner could become a "person of interest" in an old case in Arkansaw?
Not sure if this could happen with today's technology, but... A bad guy shoots someone, say, in Little Rock and doesn't get caught. He moves to Indy, shoots another person using the same weapon, but gets caught. Time passes and the gun goes to auction, is purchased, sold a few times through legal transfers and the new buyer relocates to Little Rock. For whatever reason the buyer and his gun collection come under scrutiny. Is it possible, through ballistics, that the new owner could become a "person of interest" in an old case in Arkansaw?
Have you ever seen what winds up in property/evidence rooms?
For every HK or collector, there are HUNDREDS of sub $100 Davis, Jennings, etc. Sawed off and beat up handguns & rifles, homemade crap, etc.
PAID TIME to do the paperwork & secure storage is worth 3 times what most of that crap is worth.
And seriously, when a Tec 9 or High Point goes through a shredder, do you REALLY shed a tear?
Nobody wants to have been the department that sold, say, a murder weapon and then it ends up being used in another crime. The argument will be, erroneously, that but for the gun being sold by the agency the subsequent crime would not have happened.
Magical thinking, if even that.
There is a solution to this.
The way Goodwill runs their operation, when they get a 'donation', any media object with a barcode gets scanned and the expected resale price is ascertained based on completed ebay transactions. If the expected resale price is greater than the cost of processing, it gets sent to a central location to be cataloged and resold through ebay or similar. If not, it gets put on the shelf, and if it sells, great, if not, it gets thrown out when they run out of shelf room.
There is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing with firearms and Gunbroker. Heck, you don't even have to do the work yourself, I'm sure there are FFLs who would fight each other over the opportunity, just crate them up and sell them by the 500lb lot.
I won't say "no" but I think you've got better odds of being struck by lightening as you turn in your winning PowerBall ticket after your date with Sofia Vergara. The match would be made the first time the gun was test fired and compared against the database. In order for anything like this to happen, the gun would have to be involved in yet another incident bringing it to police attention, the originating agency would have to be unaware of the first hit, and after so much passage of time simply owning the weapon involved doesn't make you a "person of interest" in the way you are meaning it unless you fit other factors. Do you happen to be the same race/sex/approximate age/approximate height, etc. and were in the city at the time? Probably not. You'd be eliminated very quickly.