Big Apple officials crushed nearly 3,600 illegal guns in a wood-chipper-like machine on Thursday – with the scraps to be used to weld a memorial to victims of gun violence.
Some 3,575 semi-automatic weapons, revolvers seized off the city’s streets in now-closed criminal cases were loaded onto a conveyor belt and fed into a chipper at an event in Westbury just two days after an innocent grandmother was killed by stray gunfire in Harlem.
“Destroying these guns are crucial,” Hizzoner said at the headquarters of evidence destruction vendor Reworld. “Not only is it substantive, ridding a gun off our street, but there’s a level of symbolism that’s attached to it, of how we are not going to ever surrender to violence.
“These are weapons of destruction, weapons of pain, weapons of chaos that we are removing off our streets,” he added. “And we know that we have to do more, and we will do more, and this is what keeps me up at night….when you hear about a shooting that takes place in our city.”
Adams pointed to the deadly Tuesday night shooting of Excenia Mette, 61 – an innocent bystander who heard gunshots and simply stepped outside to see if her grandson was OK.
“[I was] speaking with the son of a victim of gun violence yesterday, and talking about the beautiful life that his mom lived, and how she gave back and contributed to the Harlem community,” the mayor said.
“When we lose someone prematurely to violence, it impacts us all, and even when the bullet hits the intended target, the emotional pathway does not stop,” he added. “It continues to rip apart the anatomy of our city, the anatomy of our community, and that is why we’re here today.”
Adams said the now-destroyed weapons are only a small fraction of the more than 21,400 guns seized during his administration.
Out of the 21,400, more than 1,400 have been identified as ghost guns – unserialized, untraceable weapons assembled from a kit or printed through 3-D printers, city officials said.
The number of ghost guns recovered in the city has been on a steady rise since 2018, when the NYPD seized 17 such weapons, officials said.
That number nearly tripled in 2019, when 48 ghost guns were recovered – and its surged to 150 in 2020, 263 in 2021, 585 in 2022, 394 in 2023 and 438 in 2024.
So far in 2025, 71 ghost guns have been seized, according to officials.
“From day one, this administration has mounted an all out effort to reduce gun violence,” Adams said. “From our gun violence prevention task force to our neighborhood safety teams, I’ve testified before Congress about gun violence, urged the Supreme Court to uphold gun safety laws, worked with leaders and mayors across the nation, and sued the makers and marketers of ghost guns.”
The scraps from the smashed-up guns will be donated to the School of Cooperative Technical Education (Coop Tech) in East Harlem, where students in the welding vocational program will use the metal to create a memorial honoring the victims lost by gun violence.
“I want to thank them for taking on this important project,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. “These guns have no place in our neighborhoods. They stoked fear, inflicted pain, and destroyed lives. And they belong right here, in the tear box of an industrial metal shredder.”
Adams invited families of those lost to gun violence to call out their slain relatives’ names as the guns went through the shredder.
“I’m going to say this over and over again, and it needs to become a constant message,” Hizzoner said. “This is a day when we have to decide whose side are you on. Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of coddling and protecting people who are inflicting violence on innocent people? Or are you on the side of the innocent people? I’m on the side of the innocent people.”
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