Company helps dispose of unwanted guns

(AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

Thanks to the plethora of gun control laws on the books, it’s difficult for some to get rid of unwanted guns. That’s especially true in states where universal background checks are required, but even in states without them, there can be difficulties.

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Especially in a case where a gun owner has passed away. Companies that handle estate sales often aren’t equipped to deal with firearms.

That’s where this company steps in.

Most gun businesses sell firearms, but Colorado Gun Services specializes in helping people to legally dispose of unwanted weapons.

Lee and Jenna Heigl, who operate the company out of their Monument home, started Colorado Gun Services in late 2021 to sell firearms acquired by California Gun Services, a company owned by Jenna’s brother, that couldn’t legally be sold in California but could be in Colorado. But the couple soon found a more lucrative niche catering to those who end up with unwanted weapons through inheritance or divorce.

“Gun enthusiasts would have no reason to need us,” Lee Heigl said. “We are a service for people who are not comfortable around guns. We help them legally get rid of guns they don’t want. It is nice to help out a widow with these weapons.”

Now, a lot of places that deal with “unwanted guns” tend to take those guns and remove them from circulation. They destroy them in some manner so as to prevent anyone from using those firearms again.

Which sucks because sometimes, the collections of deceased gun owners include rare or otherwise collectible firearms.

Yet these guys generally don’t do that.

Companies specializing in estate sales of inherited items typically are not licensed to handle firearms, Lee Heigl said, so selling guns must be handled separately from the rest of an estate sale.

Colorado Gun Services fills that niche by paying the client for the gun, then reselling it to another licensed dealer while charging the client a fee for handling the transaction. Colorado Gun Services also can destroy guns that are unsafe to use and can’t be repaired, he said.

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So yeah, they destroy guns, but only those that can’t be salvaged in some way.

Look, these guys shouldn’t be needed. We shouldn’t need companies to handle the lawful transfer of firearms after the owner dies. We just shouldn’t.

But, as they note, some people just don’t like guns. That’s fine. They don’t have to.

As such, someone needs to take them off their hands. At least outfits like this take them and put them back into circulation. This matters because a lot of people can’t afford new firearms, but used guns are a bit easier to obtain.

At least, that’s the case if they want a good firearm.

These are unwanted guns. They’re firearms that, for whatever reason, the new owner doesn’t have any interest in keeping. Without outfits like this, we’d see more and more unwanted guns destroyed, thus driving up the cost for used firearms and making them unobtainable for anyone not flush with cash.

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