Photo Courtesy: Gun Digest
The St. Louis Police Department has decided to sell 27 of its historic and valuable Thompson submachine guns in an effort to raise the funds necessary to purchase new duty firearms for its officers, according to a report from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Guns America reports that the “Tommy guns,” or Thompson submachine guns were chambered in 45 ACP and used by both gangsters and law enforcement in the early twentieth century. The St. Louis PD used their arsenal to fight organized crime and bootlegging operations during the Prohibition era, but the guns have been in storage since the 1960s.
Kentucky-based Midwest Distributors has agreed to pay $22,000 for each of the iconic rifles, but they will likely sell the old police arsenal to private parties for much, much more.
A local dealer valued the entire collection in 2014 at $770,000, and two 1920s Colt-made models are worth $31,000 apiece. The cheapest gun in the collection, an Auto-Ordinance/Savage M1 from 1942, was appraised at a mere $14,000.
