2,220 Guns Into the Furnace

To curb gun violence, officials Thursday melted 2,220 handguns and other firearms collected by the Los Angeles Police Department.

TAMCO Steel melted the weapons in a furnace at its steel mill in Rancho Cucamonga, recycling them into steel bars to be used during construction of the Alameda Corridor Project, a transportation system that will run from the harbor area to downtown Los Angeles.

The LAPD collects an average of 8,000 guns a year, mostly weapons that are seized after being used in crimes, Lt. Horace Frank said. Others are turned in by citizens.

“These are 2,200 . . . guns” that “are not going to make it back on the streets in weapon form,” Ffrank said.

Leonard Robinson, environmental safety manager at TAMCO, founded the meltdown program and named it Project Isaiah after the biblical passage Isaiah 2:4, which reads, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

The LAPD joined the project seven years ago.

Constantina Milonopoulos, director of Kidz Voice, which works to keep guns out of the hands of young people, witnessed the melting-down Thursday. “When you think about all the fear and terror guns brought,” she said, “it’s incredible to watch it melted down and transformed into something beneficial for the community.”