Police go through guns from gun buyback program - 14 News, WFIE, Evansville, Henderson, Owensboro

NEW ALBANY, IN (WAVE) - Several residents in New Albany traded in their guns for cash.

On Friday, December 28, the anonymous gun buyback program was held in New Albany leaving police with 249 guns. Now, the police department has begun the process of going through everything they've collected.

"Our goal and objective in this thing was to get them out of the homes and possibly off the streets," said New Albany Major Keith Whitlow. "Any of those guns could have been stolen at some point so, it can't hurt."

The New Albany gun buyback program brought in 100 handguns, two assault type weapons, and a lot of rifles and shotguns. Now, those guns are at the New Albany Police Department.

"A lot of these handguns, if not all of these handguns are pretty typical of what street officers both here and even in Kentucky will encounter," said Whitlow.

Major Whitlow says officers are cataloging the guns with a serial number and will run them through the National Crime Information Center database to see if any of the guns are stolen or wanted in connection with a crime. If they come back clean, the guns will be destroyed.

"Shredding them or cutting them up with a torch we haven't come up with a method we are going to use yet," said Whitlow. "We don't have a lot of storage at the police department anyway's the quicker we can get them processed get them out of here the better off we are gonna be."

The New Albany Police department had a budget of $50,000 for their gun buyback program and the money was gone after two hours. Major Whitlow says if any money is re cooped from the scrap metal from the guns, they will likely throw it back into a fund for a future gun buyback program if they have one.

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