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But according to a Boston Police Department administrator, the city has for years traded its old guns with the Interstate Arms Corporation, a Massachusetts gun dealer that refused to comment.

William Casey, deputy superintendent of the Bureau of Administrative Services for the Boston Police Department, says that thousands of guns belonging to uniformed Boston cops and detectives were swapped one-for-one for new guns. A few years ago, the Boston PD traded 3,000 to 4,000 .38s for the same number of 9 mms, says Glock's Jannuzzo. Then just a few weeks ago, the Boston PD traded around 4,000 9 mms for .40-caliber Glocks, a deal that could be worth up to $1.7 million to the city.

"I just got mine two weeks ago," Casey said in an interview with Salon News on Friday. "We did this with the caveat that the guns would be sold outside of the United States, so as to prevent them from being circulated in the U.S."

But according to Jannuzzo, Boston's previous gun swap -- when it traded .38s for 9 mms -- had "no such caveat. There were no restrictions on that first deal whatsoever."

Talk about a "veil of deniability." And this from a city now suing the gun industry for, among other things, "willful blindness."

Police departments -- in order to pay for much-needed equipment -- have sometimes turned to creative ways to find money for new weapons.

The city of Detroit filed its lawsuit against the gun industry on April 26. But when Detroit sought to buy new Glock .40-caliber pistols in the mid-'90s, amid a budget crisis, the city looked to sell the 9,000 guns it had in its inventory, says Jannuzzo. "Those were old guns, dating back to when Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill," he says. Detroit didn't swap its inventory, however, as New Orleans, Boston and Alameda County did. According to Jannuzzo, Detroit put out word that the inventory was for sale, and then accepted the highest bid, from a private gun dealership in northern Vermont. Then, with that money, Detroit purchased its new weapons from Glock. A spokesman for the Detroit Police Department could neither confirm nor deny where the funding came from, though he did say the department uses relatively new .40-caliber Glock pistols.

Just a few weeks ago, on May 25, San Francisco filed its lawsuit against the gun industry on behalf of several jurisdictions, including Berkeley, Sacramento and nearby San Mateo and Alameda counties.

According to Jannuzzo, however, just last year the Alameda County Sheriff's Department traded 500 9 mm Glocks for roughly the same number of Sigs. "About two years ago we did have the Glocks and we did trade them for Sig Sauers," said Deputy Sheriff R. Glen, who added he didn't know the process by which the guns were traded.

This stands in marked contrast with the San Francisco Police Department, which destroys all of its old weapons. "I got the guy right here who cuts them up with a saw, puts them inside wrecked cars and watches them go through a conveyor belt and get shredded," said San Francisco Police Officer Charlie Lyons of the property clerk's division.

But by far the most extreme example of this practice can be seen in the Big Easy. New Orleans, it should be noted, isn't just one of some 20-odd cities and counties to sue gun manufacturers and distributors. When it filed its suit last October, New Orleans was the first city to do so -- which Mayor Marc Morial is fond of reminding voters and reporters and fellow mayors and anyone within earshot.

The New Orleans gun swap was similarly groundbreaking, says Doug Kiesler, who brokered the deal. He calls it "the largest confiscated deal ever to happen in the U.S."

(Morial refused comment; a spokesman said that his office was investigating the deal with Glock and would make no comments until that investigation was concluded.)

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