Anti-gun politicians afraid of their own shadows are once against costing taxpayers a boatload of money.

As Baltimore County police replace nearly 2,000 service weapons, they won’t allow the old ones to be sold in gun shops — a decision that will prevent firearms from entering the open market but could triple the agency’s cost.

Officials will instead try to sell the weapons to county police officers or to other law enforcement agencies, spokeswoman Elise Armacost said.

The department had planned to sell its 15-year-old Sig Sauers to a wholesaler, but realized it couldn’t be certain they wouldn’t wind up in private hands, Armacost said. The change will cost the county nearly $700,000.

This refusal to trade old police firearms back to the manufacturer is a recent trend in anti-gun blue states, that typically puts the taxpayer on the hook for tens to hundreds or hundreds of thousands of dollars in what is obvious government waste driven by purely by paranoid partisan politics.

Anti-gun Baltimore County Police Chief James W. Johnson, a political appointee, is responsible for this expensive and wasteful decision.

The firearms returned to manufacturers from police agencies are inspected by the manufacturer for safety, and are then sold to distributors or wholesalers, who in turn sell them to federally-licensed gun dealers. Each and every gun must be sold with a FBI NICS background check.

Nonetheless, under the guise of “keeping guns off the street,” these governments disdainfully assume that Americans who at a bare minimum pass federal background checks, plus any state and local permitting and licensing requirements, have criminal intent.

It’s both an expensive waste of taxpayer money in a crippled economy, and insulting to the very public that pays the salaries of these lawmakers.