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BOSTON -- Local police need a solution to their problem storing confiscated guns -- and they need one fast.
A domestic violence statute that took effect in 1994 and was amended at the end of last year requires officers to confiscate guns from people who are served with restraining orders. The result: a rise in the number of seized guns.
It may help make the state safer, but, in the process, police say they are being overwhelmed with weapons.
"It's a real problem, when you get out into the smaller communities," to guard the confiscated guns, said Southboro Police Chief William J. Colleary. "A few police departments don't have a guarded facility available 24 hours a day."
In the tiny central Massachusetts town of Oakham, the police station has only two rooms. "We've got probably 40 guns here, and we've run out of storage space," said Oakham Police Chief David I. Galena.
Galena said he had to seek out extra space for confiscated guns, including rifles, in a vault at the town clerk's office.
While smaller departments feel more put out, the problem affects larger ones as well.
Even without the extra guns coming in, "Our building is bursting at the seams," Worcester Deputy Police Chief James M. Gallagher said.
In Worcester, Gallagher said, officers deliver about five or six restraining orders a day, at least a quarter of which involve firearms.
It may not sound like a lot, but the number of guns is usually more than one per person, he said.
"Most often the person that has one gun, has several guns," Gallagher said.
Chiefs have both storage and handling concerns about the guns, some of them expensive or museum-quality pieces confiscated from collectors.
"They're getting scratched, they're getting dented," said John M. Collins, attorney for the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. "And now you have some liability."
The association is trying to get the state to consider alternate means for the storage of confiscated weapons.
"I have great hope that they'll come out with some sort of a resolve that will at least, if not physically take the burden off of us, financially allow us to handle it," Gallagher said.
The Legislature's Committee on Public Safety is considering a bill that would treat confiscated guns much like confiscated cars, requiring an outside agency to take storage responsibility and the gun owner to pay for it.
Many chiefs are enthusiastic about the bill, which would save them time and money, in addition to space.
"Realistically it could take until the fall (to approve)," said Collins. Still, he said he was optimistic about the bill, which received favorable testimony in an April hearing.
Massachusetts is the only state with the problem, according to the National Chiefs of Police Association. So for now, Massachusetts chiefs are alone in keeping confiscated guns under guard.
"Somehow we'll find a way," said Gallagher.
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