The deadly cache
Now that’s a machine gun, Kelly!
A powerful Calico 9mm — with a 50-round magazine — was among the 509 guns taken off the streets at a Queens gun buyback and laid out yesterday at Police Headquarters.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, looking like a modern-day Eliot Ness in a sharp pinstriped suit and French cuffs, handled some of the more powerful firearms while showing off the deadly cache, which he said cost the city about $85,000.
“We think it’s money well spent,” Kelly said, as he surveyed the haul, which included an AK-47 and a TEC-9.
He was joined by Queens DA Richard Brown and state Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens).
Police also collected 245 revolvers, 168 semiautomatic pistols, 31 shotguns and 35 rifles.
The buyback, held at Jerusalem Baptist Church in Jamaica, was one of the most successful to date, and came as the NYPD battles a 6 percent spike in shootings this year.
“Saturday’s event . . . represents a turning point in community involvement in getting guns off of the street,” Brown said. “We’ve come together to denounce gun violence and an unacceptable level of violence that exists today.”
Anyone with a working firearm was encouraged to turn it in, completely anonymously and no questions asked, in exchange for a $200 bank card.
“We don’t assume that people who are walking in with the gun are necessarily the owner of that gun,” said Kelly, noting that it is not unusual for a grandmother to bring in a gun for one of her relatives.
“We know that surrogates are being used, that agents are being used. That’s our assumption.
“And we’ll take it from anyone bringing it in,” Kelly added.
The top cop said he wasn’t surprised to see an AK-47 in the mix.
“Believe it or not, there’s a lot of them out there,” he said. “The AK-47 is probably the most ubiquitous weapon in the world. They’re everywhere, in a lot of variations and made in a lot different countries — and some people even use them as hunting rifles.”
An AK-47-style weapon was used in last month’s triple murder in Queens, in which three clubgoers were followed from Brooklyn to a quiet street in Springfield Gardens and cut down in their car.
The NYPD checks some of the guns that are turned in to see if they’ve been used in any crimes.
“We do some limited checks, we don’t check them all,” Kelly said, adding that the cops on site “use their expertise and make certain that they are rendered harmless.”
Smith hailed the success, but stressed that the buyback “just tipped the ice berg. There’s much more to come.”
The city has spent about $1.4 million, buying back about 8,200 firearms, since it started the program in 2008, Kelly said.