River of Guns in L.A. Never Stops Flowing : Weapons: About 25,000 firearms a year are destroyed. The inventory has gotten more powerful, including an antitank rocket launcher.

A river of blued steel and chrome flows from dozens of police evidence rooms throughout Los Angeles County to a scrap metal shredder in Long Beach.

In the last two decades, Clean Steel Inc. has taken 450,000 guns out of circulation--enough weapons each year to arm every man, woman and child in a city the size of South Pasadena.

The river never stops. This month, about 25,000 firearms--from derringers to antiaircraft guns--were crunched, loaded on barges, and towed to Japan to make rebars for homes and skyscrapers. It was the haul of a single year. Next year, the shelves of these evidence rooms will brim anew with at least 25,000 guns.

The Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seize these guns as evidence in crimes ranging from gas station stickups to long-planned murders. Many of the weapons were stolen from gun collectors or homeowners who bought them for protection, authorities said.

“The more guns there are out there, the more guns there are to be stolen and used in crimes,” said Bill Moran, commanding officer for the LAPD’s 30,000-square-foot central property room.

“Take this one, for instance,” Moran said, holding up a flat-black Spas 12-gauge shotgun with a pistol grip and collapsible stock. “You don’t shoot quail with one of these.”

He opened drawers stuffed with guns and ammunition, including a .45-caliber Mac-10 equipped with a silencer, an antitank rocket launcher and Teflon-coated bullets capable of penetrating concrete and cars. A Thompson submachine gun in a violin case, an arresting echo of Prohibition days, rested on a nearby shelf.

“That thing could sure ruin your day,” Moran said.

All the guns seized in crimes each year are tagged, trotted out for trials, and returned to endless aisles of shelves. Unless the rightful owners claim them, they will go to the scrap yard next July.

Only the composition of the river of steel changes from year to year, police say. Sampling it shows a dark side of Southern California and, perhaps, the nation.

“There’s tons of guns out there,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Edward Nordskog. “Why? Because everybody is afraid. Why? Because they read the papers and watch television and believe they need protection.”

Guns have evolved over the last 20 years. While police said that the bulk of confiscated weapons are still handguns--.22-caliber pistols and snub-nosed “Saturday night specials”--the evidence rooms are becoming crowded with more imposing weapons, an arsenal that could outfit a modern guerrilla army. There are automatic 12-gauge “street sweepers,” machine pistols and assault rifles capable of firing bursts of armor-piercing bullets in seconds.

Those who process this materiel find the work frightening.

“The guns scare me to death, to tell you the truth,” said Officer Lillian Woodfin, who has logged more than 15,000 guns in her three years in the Police Department’s heavily guarded central property room. “It’s sad that these weapons are destroying us.”

About 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, Sheriff’s Deputy Bob Schneider was helping to catalogue and stack the 10 guns a day that come through the Lynwood Sheriff’s Station--the busiest district in the county with 20 gang-related murders reported so far this year.

Schneider, who was a reserve officer in Merced before joining the Sheriff’s Department in February, waved a hand over box loads of pistols and gun racks stacked with assault rifles and sawed-off shotguns.

“In Merced, you could count the number of guns on one hand,” he said. “When I came here I asked, ‘Where did all these guns come from?’

“I was told, ‘From drive-bys, assaults, premeditated murders and rapes’--stuff I only saw in the movies.”

Around the corner from the Lynwood Station, a 17-year-old gang member talked knowledgeably about the gun business.

“Nowadays, you can expect to get shot back in a drive-by--so you better have a good gun,” he said, speaking only on the condition that his name not be used. “You can let go a lot of shots, reload and do it again. It’s safer.”

Peering up and down Imperial Avenue for the ride that would take him to a job interview at a hamburger joint, he went on:

“But you take a big risk when you buy a gun on the street, because they might have put murders in it. Or you could shoot someone and sell it to someone else.

“It goes on and on.”

Just like the river.