Every few months, an enormous industrial grinder spins up at Mitchell and tens of thousands of dollars worth of firearms are poured in.
The metal, timber and composite rubble which drops into the bin below would make a gun collector weep.
Unlike nearly all other police items which are seized, lost, impounded or determined to be the proceeds of crime, guns cannot be sold back into the community no matter how exotic, collectable or rare the firearm is.
Very rarely, a firearm exhibit of great community interest or rarity goes into the Australian Federal Police collection, usually at the request of the federal Forensic Intelligence and Armoury Team (FIAT).
But it happens so infrequently the head of ACT Policing's Firearms Registry, Sergeant Rod Swain, cannot even recall one.
What's left over are hundreds of firearms racked and stacked in cabinets inside a bank-sized vault at the Exhibit Management Centre in Mitchell, inevitably waiting their turn for the big shredder.
And even someone who knows little or nothing about firearms would be amazed at the variety.
There are over-and-under shotguns, sawn-offs, hunting rifles, revolvers, pistols and even an engraved and brass-capped wooden flint-lock rifle which looks like it came off the set of Lawrence of Arabia.
"With some of these firearms, clearly they are very valuable and manufactured with an extraordinary amount of care and precision," Sergeant Swain said.
"But the law is very clear on this point. If you are not a registered gun owner and licensed to own that firearm, it hasn't been purchased through a licensed firearms dealer, and it isn't stored correctly in a gun safe, then you are breaking the law.
"What separates firearms from most other items seized by police is that even a 100-year-old muzzle-loader still has the same capability to kill someone just as a modern rifle does.
"The problem posed to the community by unregistered firearms, regardless of their age, doesn't diminish over time."
One of the rising issues in the ACT is the proliferation of gel blasters which shoot water pellets. These are often ordered online and usually out of Queensland, where the weapons are not outlawed. Gel blasters come in a variety of appearances, from AK-47s to shotguns. As imitation firearms they are illegal in the ACT.
Before the famous post-Port Arthur massacre national gun amnesty of 1996 and the dramatic change to national licence laws, some firearms could be legally possessed and not registered.
While that situation now has changed completely, Sgt Swain said the "grey market" of pre-1996 firearms still existed.
"What we see, although it's becoming rarer now, is that when an elderly member of the family passes away, in the bottom of grandad's chest-of-drawers is an old revolver, or an old .303 rifle in the roof of the back shed," he said.
"And a few times a year we still get calls from people who've bought a house, gone up into the roof cavity and found an old rifle there."
His advice to anyone in this situation is to give the ACT Firearms Registry a call and they will come and collect the weapon.
"It's much safer that way," he said.
"If you don't have any experience in handling firearms, it's best to just leave it where it is and we will come out and get it."
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