I reserve the right to have mispelled words do to my phone’s autoincorrect...and I am not saying it never happens...just that it is not common and the story we were commenting on referred to a gun being taken for evidence in a criminal case...not a gun grab for monetary gain.
If I was trying to impugn someone’s intelligence I would have said it was the dumbest thing I had read..I purposely used the phrase I chose so I wouldn’t call someone a name but just comment in their opinion.
Actually the story did not state that the gun was taken for evidence but a poster suggested that was the cause, the story itself only stated that the police took the weapon.
As the shotgun was not fired in the incident there was no cause for the police to take the weapon in to evidence. Most likely it is the policy of the department to take any weapon in view when they arrive on the scene of a crime “in to custody”.
In my experience of reading about these cases it then becomes a legal tug of war between the police department and the owner of the weapon for position of the weapon. Most often the owner of the weapon gives up because the cost of recovery becomes more than the weapon is worth. The police then have defacto ownership of the weapon and it is eventually an unclaimed weapon that is part of a gun replacement deal or less often these days an auction.