Miami's streets are paved with assault weapons-- but cash-strapped grifters keep stealing them to sell as scrap.

In the East Redlands, a foreclosed development has had all of its manhole covers stolen, presumably by scrap peddlers who can get six cents a pound for them -- or about $6 per hundred-pound lid.

Neighbors, who have been using the abando-minium complex as a park, are fretting that robbers might hide in the open sewers (huh?) or that they themselves might fall in and never again re-emerge.

From the Miami Herald:

Related Stories Florida Couple Charged With Stealing $76,000 Worth of Honey

"Someone is going to fall in there one day and no one is going to hear them,'' said George Detrio, who lives two blocks away.

Also this week, the Miami-Dade Police Department announced it is taking 500 confiscated assault weapons to a smelter in an "undisclosed location", where the guns will be melted and turned into manhole covers. Presumably, a few of the lids will then be shipped to the East Redlands.

So as long as serious criminals keep getting arrested and having their guns taken away, two-bit grifters will have new manholes to steal. It's trickle-down economics at work.