GREENSBORO, N.C. — There are too many guns and not enough storage within the Greensboro Police Department.
That's the problem the department is facing after seizing thousands of firearms from the community over the years.
WFMY News 2 spoke with the forensic services director on how they're handling the issue.
Greensboro Police officers work day in and day out, confiscating guns that are either illegal or used in a crime.
"Some of the guns we are still retaining because they are needed for court and things like that," Kelly Moore said.
They've got to be stored somewhere. In this case, it's an overcrowded vault.
"We have over 11,000 firearms in custody at present," Moore said.
Moore said the vault is designed to only hold 3,000 firearms. There are ways to reduce the number.
"What the law allows us to do now once we received authorization that gun is no longer needed to be retained in our custody we receive a court order, that court order permits us to either retain the gun for official agency use or we are authorized to sell trade or exchange the firearm with a federally licensed firearm dealer," Moore explained.
Moore said the department prefers to give a stolen gun back to its rightful owner but if they can't track them down, GPD keeps it.
"We are able to destroy guns only when they do not have a legible serial number or identification number or when they are unsafe to use," Moore said.
The department says it wants the ability to destroy guns without any restrictions. It's something they were able to do before the law changed in 2013.
"If we were unable to locate an owner or an owner couldn't legally possess a firearm and we were authorized to release the custody we would destroy the firearms," Moore said.
There's a proposed bill in Raleigh that loosen some restrictions on destroying firearms. Representative Pricey Harrison supports it.
"That's another important provision in our bill, there are people back home sheriff city Council police chief that feel strongly about being able to destroy the guns," Harrison said.
"That would be a big help," Moore said.
The Guilford County Sheriff's Office says it also has a full storage unit.
As for the bill, it's currently in a house committee.