Where Guns Go to Be Reincarnated

[Elderberry]

NY Times  By Tiffany Hsu 7/24/2018

Steel from firearms melted down at mills around the country is used for construction, mining and more.



What should America do with its unwanted guns?

At steel mills around the country, the answer is simple: Throw them into a giant caldron, heat them up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit and liquefy them into an orange ooze.

For years, firearms at these so-called gun melts have served as an inexpensive supply of scrap metal that can be turned into bars of high-grade steel and later used as components in mining, construction and energy projects. 

And as recent shootings have put gun control into the headlines, interest in gun melts is increasing at some mills.   

More than a thousand guns were turned in last month in St. Paul at a steel mill run by Gerdau Long Steel North America, a subsidiary of a Brazilian company that processes scrap metal. The mill has produced steel used in wind turbine foundations, Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Caterpillar equipment.

The firearms come from a variety of sources: rifles confiscated by the police, shotguns surrendered by owners, handguns used as evidence in closed cases and deactivated service weapons.

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/business/gun-buyback-recycling-melt.html

[Elderberry]

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20180727/new-york-times-revels-in-mass-gun-destruction-photo-essay

The term “gun porn” – which can be derogatory or not, depending on the context – refers to photographs that unabashedly celebrate the engineering and artistry of firearms. It pokes fun at the idea that there is something about seeing shiny chrome or deep bluing on a well-crafted receiver that quickens the pulse of Second Amendment advocates and firearm enthusiasts. Who wouldn’t, after all, want those guns for themselves?

It turns out the New York Times and its readers have their own version of this phenomenon, as depicted in a lavishly illustrated, full-color photo-essay first published online Tuesday (coincidentally the same day the normally liberal Ninth Circuit ruled that public open carry is protected by the Second Amendment). Their version, however, tantalizes its adherents with vivid images of mass firearm destruction. What reader of the New York Times, after all, doesn’t fantasize about the day when America’s guns finally meet their long-destined hour of reckoning in the fiery depths of a steel mill’s furnace?

Entitled “Where Guns Go to Be Reincarnated,” the piece actually indulges two liberal fetishes: industrial-scale firearms destruction, coupled with repurposing of the material for things like publicly funded infrastructure projects. And if gun melts and recycling are not enough of a sensory overload, the pictures are accompanied by lurid text, suggesting that the real solution to America’s “unwanted guns” is to “[t]hrow them into a giant caldron, heat them up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit and liquefy them into an orange ooze.”