Cleanup crews on the site of the Palisades fire have found roughly 500 firearms in the debris of homes that burned earlier this year and the Los Angeles Police Department is now working to reunite the weapons with their owners.
Most of the charred handguns and rifles found in the ash appear damaged, with the stocks burned away and the metal baked to a copper color, according to photos shared by the LAPD on Wednesday. The guns are difficult to identify due to the fire damage, police said, but the LAPD’s Gun Recovery Unit wants to give their owners the chance to claim them.
LAPD officials did not say how many — if any — of the recovered firearms are still functional but authorities made clear that they also want to have a record of which guns are destroyed or returned to their rightful owners and how many are still unaccounted for. The data collected will be entered into the state’s Automated Firearms System, according to police…