In a direct response to the ongoing battle against gun violence in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams, NYPD Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, and a coalition of community leaders have decidedly taken to destroy 3,575 illegal firearms. These included 3,375 handguns and 200 rifles, all seized during the Adams administration. In a move representative of the city's commitment to safety, the weapons were scrapped at Reworld, a Westbury vendor specializing in secure evidence disposal.
Adams highlighted the intention behind the gesture, "Today, we say goodbye and good riddance to thousands of illegal guns that no longer threaten the safety of our neighborhoods, our families, or our children by sending over 3,500 illegal guns off to their final destination: into a gun chipper to be turned into scrap metal and eventually recycled," the Mayor stated according to a press release from the Office of the Mayor. Tisch reiterated the results of policing strategies, asserting, "This is how you drive down shootings, and it's exactly what we'll keep doing."
The discarded firearms will be transformed for educational use, as the School of Cooperative Technical Education (Coop Tech) plans to repurpose the metal into a memorial honoring victims of gun violence. This educational use aligns with Mayor Adams' and the NYPD's endeavours to showcase New York as the "safest big city in America," an accolade supported by the significant downturn in homicides and shootings, with a 22.7 percent and 42.2 percent reduction over the last three years, respectively, as reported by the Office of the Mayor.
Adams has highlighted the reduction of gun violence as a top priority, with actions such as the establishment of the Neighborhood Safety Teams and the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force supporting this focus. The Task Force is dedicated to prevention efforts aimed at addressing the root causes of gun violence. "We will keep pressing for more — more officers, more safety, more results," Adams proclaimed in the official statement.
The mayoral administration has taken a firm stance on the rise of ghost guns—unserialized firearms increasingly used by criminals. The NYPD has reported a notable increase in the recovery of these weapons, rising from 17 in 2018 to 71 so far in 2025. Efforts to regulate these firearms have reached the highest court, with Mayor Adams filing an amicus brief in support of serial number requirements and background checks for ghost gun home-assembly kits.
District Attorneys across the boroughs, including Darcel D. Clark from the Bronx, and Eric Gonzalez from Brooklyn, have voiced their support for the initiative. "It is sad that we continue to see so many guns in our city, but we will keep working together to remove them from the hands of criminals," Clark told the Office of the Mayor. Meanwhile, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. highlighted the need to "close the iron pipeline," addressing the external flow of illegal guns into the city.
