It took you how long to figure it out?

Guns have more value as guns than they do scrap metal

Selling them would bring money in, whereas paying someone to melt them down, means more money being spent by the city, the real question is why did it take this long to figure it out?, and who hired you?
I'm sure the quality varies from junk to fairly decent, lets say the city could net, oh an average of $50 per gun, that would be well over $300,000 coming in, instead of paying $80,000 out, that's enough stimulus to hire a couple of more officers