This reminds me... in 1999, following the 1996 Dunblane massacre where 16 children and a teacher were killed by Thomas Hamilton using legally-owned pistols and revolvers, the government decided to outlaw private ownership of handguns.
They collected from the public a few thousand legally-owned handguns, and paid-out compensation to the owners to value of the recovered items. This operation did cost a pretty penny, the government estimated it at around £150,000 but some say the actual cost was nearer the £500,00 mark.
The point is that they had to decide what to do with the recovered handguns... some were memorabilia items, but most were used by owners for sporting purposes e.g. shooting matches and as such were quite expensive.
The problem was that what the government had on their hands was a collection of different make and models of second-hand handguns, and such such these were unsuitable for any law-enforcement or military use, and could be not be sold to a sovereign government. It was obvious that if the handguns get flogged to arms dealer (albeit legitimate arms dealers), it is inevitable that some of them will eventually be used for criminal activities in another part of the world.
So the government decided that rather than try and sell the handguns and re-coop some of the compensation pay-out costs, the recovered firearms should all be destroyed, and so they were.
Who says there is no morals in politics?
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Topic: New Secret Aircraft (Read 2271 times)