So, what happens to confiscated guns?

This is a bit belated, but I'm posting it now in case you guys missed this story last week.

The Police Department's top brass often call news conferences to show off a haul of weapons that were confiscated during drug busts and other get-a-bunch-of-bad-guys efforts. The weapons -- handguns, sawed off shotguns, rifles and so forth -- usually cover the length of two or three tables. The displays make for a great picture, or B-roll footage for the top of the news.

I always wonder what happens to the firearms -- and the ammo, for that matter -- after the reporters leave the room. Do they all get melted down? Shoved into an industrial-sized closet, maybe?

Guns, bullets and every other kind of projectile imaginable end up at the PD's Firearms Identification Unit, where 20 full-timers process more than 5,000 weapons every year. Their story:

IN THE MIDDLE of a narrow, darkened room, Officer Larry Hagler sat hunched over a microscope, peering at a mangled slug that had been removed from a homicide victim's spine.

He had spent hours staring at the bullet, like it was a magic puzzle with a surprising hidden image - and, in a way, it was.

Hagler, a member of the Police Department's Firearms Identification Unit, said he was studying the "hills and valleys," the minuscule markings that are left on a bullet when it's fired from a gun.

If he's lucky, after staring at the bullet for a couple of hours or a couple of days, he'd notice that the hills and valleys on the malformed slug match the pattern on a bullet from a different crime scene, thus helping detectives resolve an unsolved case.

On TV shows, that kind of forensic analysis usually takes mere seconds, and leads to a pulse-pounding arrest before the next commercial break.

In the real world, the work done by Hagler and the 19 other members of the FIU is time-consuming and mentally exhausting - but plays a vital role in fighting crime.

To read the rest of the story, click here.

Finished already? Click here to read about a local gunshop owner who is turning to the Web to keep stolen guns out of stores.