The House Oversight Committee took the General Services Administration to task on Wednesday for losing hundreds of surplus firearms between 2001 and 2016 that were meant to be properly managed and tracked by the agency.
GSA manages the federal firearms surplus donation program, under which government agencies can donate surplus firearms to the agency, after which they can be made available to state and local government agencies. Donations are meant to be for law enforcement purposes.
Last year, GSA released a report that said nearly 500 firearms were unaccounted for over the last 15 years, while just 24 of those were eventually reported as found.
"The remaining 461 lost firearms — including grenade launchers, Uzis, and assault rifles — were either traded, sold, or remain missing," according to a House Oversight Committee report, which was based on GSA's data.
William Sisk, an acting assist commissioner at GSA, testified Wednesday that while several hundred guns are "missing," about two thirds of them were "found not to be missing, as they had been sold or traded" by the law enforcement agencies that received the weapons.
However, Sisk noted that those sales are "not in compliance with GSA requirements," and called those transactions "inappropriate."
