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Missouri Company Used in Gun Buybacks Doesn’t Actually Destroy the Guns | St. Louis

Published

10 months ago

December 12, 2023

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click to enlarge Gunbusters president Scott Reed speaking to Fox 2 in October.

In St. Louis and across the country, gun buybacks have been touted as a way to get firearms out of the hands of criminals and permanently destroyed.

But in many cases, including gun buybacks sponsored by police in St. Louis, it turns out that’s not what happens. The guns instead end up back on the streets — in part due to a workaround utilized by a Missouri company founded by a former St. Louis police officer.

The company is called Gunbusters. For the past 10 years, in many cases when guns have been taken off the streets of St. Louis as part of police gun buyback programs, the departments organizing those buybacks send the firearms to Gunbusters for disposal.

Yet an in-depth investigation published Sunday by the New York Times found that Gunbusters — as well as many other similar companies — often only destroys a very specific part of the gun called the frame, affixed with the gun’s serial number. Gunbusters then sells the firearm’s remaining components.

Those components, the paper found, can be used as replacement parts in another gun or can even wind up being used to build a “ghost gun,” a firearm that is virtually untraceable because its frame has no serial number.

Gunbusters and its licensees, the New York Times found, do about $90,000 a week in sales of parts from disassembled guns, including the selling of barrels, triggers, springs and grips.

Gun buybacks seem like a win-win because the person turning in the gun gets money or a gift card and the police get to take a gun off the street. But in essence, the daily reports, the gun that is bought back, or at least key portions of it, instead often forms the base of a new gun.

Gunbusters founder Raymond Reynolds served with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department from 1964 until 1988 before founding his company in 2013, according to ads Reynolds placed in Gendarme, the official publication of the St. Louis Police Officers Association. Throughout the years, the company has gotten a lot of positive press from local media, including the Riverfront Times. “Unwanted gun, who are you gonna call? For police, it’s Gunbusters,” reads one 2016 headline from Fox 2 News.

Around the time of the company’s founding, Reynolds told the RFT that he created his company’s Firearms Pulverizer as a more efficient and safer alternative for police departments to destroy guns. At the time, departments were using saws, torches and sledge hammers or in some cases just tossing guns into the ocean.

“We’ve had more and more departments that have asked us to help them come up with a way to dispose of firearms,” Reynolds told the RFT. “I was trying to figure out how to come up with a simple system to do it.”

The New York Times piece doesn’t say if Gunbusters was selling the gun components from the start or if that practice is a more recent addition to their business model. According to data from the company, approximately 950 law enforcement organizations from around the country have sent more than 200,000 guns to them to be pulverized. It’s previously been reported that the company has worked with around 20 police agencies in the metro region.

When reached for comment, Reynolds told the RFT yesterday that he was “basically retired” from the company and that he had been stepping back for the past two years. He referred all further questions to the company’s current president, Scott Reed.

Reed told the RFT in a statement that, “We disagree with a number of points in the story, with our main disagreement being that law enforcement agencies are unaware of what is happening with the firearms. The implication that agencies are being deceived about how the firearms are destroyed and how GunBusters is funded is patently false.”

The statement from Reed went on to say that when the company has an initial meeting with police departments, the police are offered a choice for any guns turned over to be completely pulverized, for a fee, or for only the frames to be destroyed, for free, with the remainder of the weapon “salvaged.”

According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, destroying only the gun frame is an acceptable manner in which to destroy a firearm.

The Times pointed out, however, that the Gunbusters website doesn’t make mention of the practice of selling component parts nor does that facet of the business feature in most stories about gun buybacks. (Contracts the company enters into with law enforcement do state, however, that Gunbusters “will sell salvaged parts and scrap metals” from the guns turned over to them.)

In 2017, another company founded by Reynolds, Police Trades, brokered a $1.2 million deal between the SLMPD and other gun dealers that enabled the department to sell a cache of Prohibition-era Tommy guns as well as outdated Beretta handguns and use the money to buy modern service weapons for their officers. In that deal, the department said that the weapons sold to dealers would only be sold to people who passed background checks.

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Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

Published

5 months ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword.

Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate.

The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault.

The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade.

This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.

As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.

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Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

Published

5 months ago

May 22, 2024

Natural Bridge

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Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection.

“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”

He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”

The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”

Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”

The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.

Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”

In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery.

“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.”

Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”

Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings.

“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)

One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said.

Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.

“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”

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St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

Published

5 months ago

May 21, 2024

Natural Bridge

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The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.

The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release.

The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.

The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.

To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/

“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”

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