If you rummage around the 'net a little you'll see similar images from Australia: claws on the ends of cranes in scrap metal yards crushing grandpa's rabbit guns in their thousands; that was after the death of a thousand cuts though, when the individuals who were forced to surrender them were invited to see them first individually crushed to make them irrepairably disabled (because in earlier times a lot of surrendered stuff was not disabled and was waylaid on the way to the smelter. Infamously, the Port Arthur massacre was commited with such surrendered and rebirthed guns).
Much good stuff was quietly rescued, but a lot was scrapped too.
RG
