The Vicksburg Police Department is putting 1,168 confiscated and unclaimed firearms on display next week.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Tuesday authorized city clerk Walter Osborne to advertise the weapons for bids to any federally licensed firearms dealer, city officials said. The board declared the weapons surplus in July.

Police chief Walter Armstrong said the guns will be displayed Tuesday through Sept. 15 in the police department training room at 804 Veto St.

The department’s weapons cache totals 1,868, but Deputy Chief John Dolan said 700 of the guns will be traded in with the department’s 100, 19-year-old 9mm Beretta handguns, to get replacement weapons.

“We hope in the long run that we’re not going to cost the taxpayers anything to get the new weapons,” Dolan told the board.

Armstrong plans to buy 100 new service weapons for the department, adding, “That will allow us to give each officer a new weapon and some extras for emergencies or if a weapon is being repaired.”

The surplus weapons going up for sale include 978 pistols and 190 rifles and shotguns — including two air rifles. Some of the weapons have been in police custody since 1978. The inventory includes firearms used in crimes, modified or had their serial numbers altered or removed, or abandoned or lost and never reclaimed.

The city had to file papers in municipal, county and circuit courts to have the weapons released to the police department so they could be declared surplus property and sold at auction.