Post-Meltdown, Seized Guns Face a Future in Construction

The 20,000 pounds of steel donated Monday to a Rancho Cucamonga recycler was estimated at $1,000. But law enforcement agencies say its real value -- the removal of about 10,000 weapons from the streets -- is priceless.

Officials of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles Police Department and Orange County Sheriff’s Department watched in delight as the weapons -- ranging from a small Derringer handgun to an AK-47 assault rifle -- were loaded into an electric furnace at Tamco Steel and melted.

The steel in the guns was recycled into rebar that will be used in the retrofitting of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, the construction of San Diego’s new baseball stadium Petco Park, and for various Southern California freeway improvements.

“This is a symbolic gesture,” said Leonard E. Robinson, Tamco’s environmental safety manager who established the event 10 years ago. “There’s something satisfying about taking a tool of destruction and turning it into a tool of construction.”

Robinson said Orange County’s involvement in the event resulted in a record for destroyed guns.

The event started in 1993 when Robinson read of a fatal drive-by shooting of a college-bound young man in his former Los Angeles neighborhood. At the time, the Los Angeles Police Department had a program that allowed citizens to cash in their guns for concert tickets.

“Knowing we melt 2,000 tons of steel a day, I figured there was a way for us to be involved in this removal of guns from the streets,” Robinson said.

Robinson called the event Project Isaiah, after the Bible passage Isaiah 2:4 that reads: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

In addition, 40 Inland Empire and federal agencies, including the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, the San Bernardino Police Department and the FBI, combine to send an estimated 20,000 weapons to Tamco for destruction annually, said Robinson.

A San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said his department incinerated 2,316 seized guns last year in an on-site plant.

At Monday’s public recycling, L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell and several police and city officials watched bulldozers carry five truckloads of weapons, including a grenade, to a 3,000-degree electric furnace.

“Once those guns get into the furnace, those guys can rest a little easier,” Robinson said.