How many rounds do you think most police trade ins have fired? I got into a discussion with a co-worker he was in a gun shop and another customer stated that you shouldn't buy police trade ins because they are wore out from shooting.I said the guy was FOS the guns aren't shot that much they show wear and tear from being carried.Who right?
That will depend on the department and the individual gun....
With smaller departments, generally all the trade-in guns will have been a regular duty carry gun for an individual officer. Most police officers have no interest in guns and will fire their duty gun only for mandatory qualification. The number of rounds fired for training and qualification varies by department, but is often under 100 rounds per year. There might be a few guns in any particular department that were carried by officers who liked to shoot and who shot the gun on their own time (usually having to pay for their own ammo). It's even possible (but unlikely) that one of the guns was issued to an officer who happened to be an avid competitive shooter who fired a few hundred rounds a week -- but it ain't likely.
With larger departments there will be more variation. Most of the guns will usually have been individual officer duty guns exactly like those described above. But if the guns came from a large metropolitan department or the state police, there is also a chance that some of the guns were Academy training guns used for range training of each class of new recruits.
Those guns will likely have a much higher round count - but even so it is unlikely that the gun will be "worn out" because even academy training guns don't fire really high round counts, and of course, the academy guns are probably better maintained (cleaned by recruits and inspected by instructors) compared to individual officer guns. At the other end of the spectrum, a large department that is changing its standard gun will probably have a few trade-ins that are new, unissued, unfired. Depending on the department, some or all of those might be sold to officers rather than being included in the guns turned in as trade-ins.
Of course, on all police trade-ins you can expect that any night sights will be getting dim - the half-life of tritium is about 12.3 years, which is why most makers of night sights guarantee them for 10 years, by which point the sight will be about half as bright as it was when new. Night sights don't just quit working (unless broken), they just keep getting dimmer starting the day the tritium was sealed in the sight. Half brightness at 12 years, one-quarter brightness at 24 years, one-eighth brightness at 37 years, etc.
The worst round counts would come on military surplus or some overseas police trade-ins. In those instances the same sort of variation would exist, where most of the guns had few (or possible zero) rounds fired, but guns from a training center might have very high round counts.
With ANY "used" gun, it is always best to personally inspect it first -- but generally speaking US police trade-in guns will almost always show more holster wear than rounds fired.
Probably the best of the Police Trade-Ins would be the Sig CPO (Certified Pre-Owned) guns where Sig takes the trade-ins from departments that are replacing Sigs with newer Sigs (same of different model). Sig inspects each gun and replaces any worn parts. But alas SIG CPO guns are hard to find at gun shops and don't generally stay in inventory long when they do show up.
