Greenfield Police Chief Robert Haigh said he hoped for twice as many guns next year. Watch video
GREENFIELD - The sky was the color of lead, everything else a shade of rust. The temperature was about 40 degrees. A light drizzle fell on men in hard hats.
It was a good day to shred some guns.
That's what they did at WTE Recycling in Greenfield on Friday -- 341 guns to be exact.
The guns were collected in Hampshire and Franklin counties on Oct. 5 in the Northwestern District Attorney's Office's first gun buy-back. On that day, people in possession of unwanted arms brought them to the police stations in Greenfield and Northampton and left them there, no questions asked. The tally, according to Chris Geffin, was 160 guns in Franklin County, 141 in Hampshire. An earlier buy-back in the Franklin County town of Orange delivered 40 more.
Geffin, who coordinates programs for elders and people with disabilities in the DA's office, also led the buy-back effort, which she deemed a huge success.
"I was very encouraged," she said, adding she was surprised at the number of weapons turned in. Those who brought long guns and handguns received $50 gift certificates. Assault weapons earned the donor$100, though there were few of those.
Police officials from Greenfield, Orange and Northampton joined Geffin at WTE Friday to witness the destruction. Amid a wasteland of crushed automobiles and smoking piles of metal scraps stood the instrument of that destruction, a green shredding complex repletes with pipes, ladders, catwalks and infernal machinery.
Operations manager Christopher Pichette explained the process. A crane with a claw feeds raw material -- scrap metal, entire cars -- into a chute, which in turns carries it into the mill, where whirling hammers smash the metal into pieces.
Wood, plastic and other non-metals are separated out, as are metals like bronze and aluminum. Magnets collect the shredded steel, which is carried up a conveyor belt and dumped into piles. The shredded steel is then shipped by rail and truck to rendering plants in the U.S. and abroad, where it is melted and recycled into everything from automotive parts in Detroit to rebar in China. WTE sends some 8,500 tons of metal through its shredded every month, said Pichette.
Greenfield Police Chief Robert Haigh and Orange Chief Craig Lundgren were among the law enforcement officials on hand to witness the shredding. A bucket-loader spread the metal from that operation across the yard for inspection. Except for a few bullet cases, the scrap was unrecognizable.
"These are guns that nobody wants on the street anymore," said Haigh. "We're here to make sure they're crushed, gone."
Haigh said he hoped for twice as many guns next year, but the gun collection will probably not become an annual event, said Geffin, noting that the process is expensive and time-consuming.
"It's quite an operation," she said. She confessed some excitement, however, when she saw the scraps pouring off the conveyor.
"I thought, 'God, I'm glad this job is done today,'" she said.