Massive Apple officers crushed practically 3,600 unlawful weapons in a wood-chipper-like machine on Thursday – with the scraps for use to weld a memorial to victims of gun violence.
Some 3,575 semi-automatic weapons, revolvers seized off town’s streets in now-closed felony circumstances have been loaded onto a conveyor belt and fed right into a chipper at an occasion in Westbury simply two days after an harmless grandmother was killed by stray gunfire in Harlem.
“Destroying these weapons are essential,” Hizzoner stated on the headquarters of proof destruction vendor Reworld. “Not solely is it substantive, ridding a gun off our avenue, however there’s a stage of symbolism that’s connected to it, of how we’re not going to ever give up to violence.
“These are weapons of destruction, weapons of ache, weapons of chaos that we’re eradicating off our streets,” he added. “And we all know that we now have to do extra, and we are going to do extra, and that is what retains me up at night time….whenever you hear a couple of taking pictures that takes place in our metropolis.”
Adams pointed to the lethal Tuesday night time taking pictures of Excenia Mette, 61 – an harmless bystander who heard gunshots and easily stepped exterior to see if her grandson was OK.
“[I was] talking with the son of a sufferer of gun violence yesterday, and speaking concerning the stunning life that his mother lived, and the way she gave again and contributed to the Harlem neighborhood,” the mayor stated.
“Once we lose somebody prematurely to violence, it impacts us all, and even when the bullet hits the supposed goal, the emotional pathway doesn’t cease,” he added. “It continues to tear aside the anatomy of our metropolis, the anatomy of our neighborhood, and that’s the reason we’re right here as we speak.”
Adams stated the now-destroyed weapons are solely a small fraction of the greater than 21,400 weapons seized throughout his administration.
Out of the 21,400, greater than 1,400 have been recognized as ghost weapons – unserialized, untraceable weapons assembled from a equipment or printed via 3-D printers, metropolis officers stated.
The variety of ghost weapons recovered within the metropolis has been on a gradual rise since 2018, when the NYPD seized 17 such weapons, officers stated.
That quantity practically tripled in 2019, when 48 ghost weapons have been recovered – and its surged to 150 in 2020, 263 in 2021, 585 in 2022, 394 in 2023 and 438 in 2024.
To date in 2025, 71 ghost weapons have been seized, based on officers.
“From day one, this administration has mounted an all out effort to scale back gun violence,” Adams stated. “From our gun violence prevention job pressure to our neighborhood security groups, I’ve testified earlier than Congress about gun violence, urged the Supreme Court docket to uphold gun security legal guidelines, labored with leaders and mayors throughout the nation, and sued the makers and entrepreneurs of ghost weapons.”
The scraps from the smashed-up weapons will likely be donated to the College of Cooperative Technical Training (Coop Tech) in East Harlem, the place college students within the welding vocational program will use the steel to create a memorial honoring the victims misplaced by gun violence.
“I need to thank them for taking up this vital mission,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch stated. “These weapons haven’t any place in our neighborhoods. They stoked worry, inflicted ache, and destroyed lives. And so they belong proper right here, within the tear field of an industrial steel shredder.”
Adams invited households of these misplaced to gun violence to name out their slain relations’ names because the weapons went via the shredder.
“I’m going to say this over and over, and it must change into a relentless message,” Hizzoner stated. “It is a day when we now have to determine whose facet are you on. Whose facet are you on? Are you on the facet of coddling and defending people who find themselves inflicting violence on harmless folks? Or are you on the facet of the harmless folks? I’m on the facet of the harmless folks.”
