Durham County sheriff sees exception to law and destroys guns collected in buyback effort
Law enforcement agencies throughout the state are struggling to find space to store guns they’ve seized.
A 2013 state law forbids them from destroying most firearms.
However, Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead explained how he destroys some guns given to the sheriff’s office as part of a buyback program. Birkhead said the community is asking law enforcement to get these guns off the streets.
“I think it’s a very important public service to get these guns off the streets,” Birkhead said.
On Saturday, the sheriff’s office is holding a gun buyback program at two locations:
- 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Durham County Memorial Stadium
- 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Mount Vernon Baptist Church
Birkhead said the sheriff's office would run the serial numbers of the guns submitted during Saturday's event to determine if a gun is stolen.
Earlier this week, several police departments around the state told WRAL News they’ve seized so many guns in recent years that they’re running out of room to store them. They want to change a state law that forbids them from destroying most firearms.
Birkhead said the Durham County Sheriff’s Office is currently holding more than 1,500 guns. He said the sheriff’s office is experiencing storage problems like the Durham Police Department and other law enforcement agencies across the state.
“We have a normal capacity of just shy of 500 [guns], so we are stacking weapons on top of weapons,” Birkhead said. “[Around] 300 weapons are being held that are related to domestic violence cases that either have not been prosecuted yet or we removed from the home for safety reasons.”
Birkhead said the buybacks are an exception to the 2013 law. He said the unique part of gun buyback is people are compensated for the weapons voluntarily surrendered to the sheriff’s office.
“In about 90 days, we are able to petition a judge after we have run all the checks to make sure they are not stolen or tied to another crime, so we do all of those checks through our data system and once the weapon has been cleared, in 90 days, as I said, we can petition a judge for an order of destruction,” Birkhead said. “That’s what we have done in the past. It works, but again, it only gets at those weapons that we retrieve during the gun buyback.
“The other weapons, we are still bound by that 2013 law … Hopefully, the legislature may take that up in the coming months, that we can relax some of those restrictions, but right now, we are certainly bound by that law.”
2013 law bars law enforcement from destroying guns
In 2013, the state legislature voted by a wide, bipartisan margin, to forbid destruction of seized or unclaimed guns, unless their serial number is illegible or they’re damaged in a way that makes them more dangerous to use.
Law enforcement is supposed to look for a gun’s rightful owner and return it to them, unless that person is convicted of a crime using the gun. Beyond that, the options are storage, using the gun in training, donating rare guns to museums or historical societies or selling them to licensed firearm dealers. With used guns, that often means pawn shops.
Former State Sen. Andrew Brock sponsored the bill that’s now the law.
“The intent of the legislation was to return stolen property back to the rightful owners. Nothing more, nothing less,” Brock said. “That people who had their firearms stolen, they would be able to have an avenue to get them back.”
Police chiefs and sheriffs are now not able to destroy guns. Brock said it wasn’t his intention when he sponsored the legislation. However, he said he does not regret his sponsorship.
“It’s almost a decade since we passed the law,” Brock said.
WRAL News asked Brock whether he thinks police departments should be able to destroy the guns.
“I think we need to go through the process to make sure that the firearms that are being seized from the criminals are returned to the rightful owners,” Brock said.
Brock said he thinks law enforcement officials need to come to the legislature with some recommendations.
Durham lawyer deciphers the 2013 law
Durham-based lawyer Daniel Meier is familiar with the state’s 2013 law through his work as a criminal defense attorney.
“If the police take the gun involuntarily from someone, it prohibits what they can do with it," Meier said. “The theory being the gun wasn’t the bad guy.”
Meier explained how Birkhead can skirt around the law through the sheriff’s office buyback program, like the event it is holding on Saturday.
“A gun buyback is a voluntary, essentially, sale of the gun to the sheriff with the intent that the sheriff destroy it,” Meier said. “He’s not seizing it from anyone, it’s not an unclaimed gun.”
Meier elaborated on the legality of destroying guns submitted during Saturday’s event.
“The statute doesn’t explicitly say a gun purchased in a buyback can be destroyed, but it doesn’t prohibit it,” Meier said. “And that’s essentially why it would work.”
Saturday’s buyback event is the second held this year by the Durham County Sheriff’s Office. In April, the sheriff’s office purchased 94 weapons.
