Posted on 05/17/2014 8:27:46 PM PDT by Slings and Arrows
Dear Cecil:
Several years ago I turned in a gun for cash during a police buyback program. For me it was a practical exchange. But do these programs have any impact? Are communities with buybacks experiencing less gun-related injury and/or crime?
Cecil replies:
Generally speaking, no. Gun buybacks are like a congregation declaring their church a nuclear-free zone. No doubt it makes them feel virtuous. But the practical impact is nil.
Gun buyback programs operate on the premise that fewer guns in society means fewer crimes, suicides, and accidents — or at least fewer deaths from those causes. Many cities have offered buybacks, but studies of their effectiveness almost always find no impact. Examples:
So why don’t gun buyback programs work?
No one seriously expects criminals are to turn in a gun and deprive themselves of a tool of the trade. Upshot: buyback programs take low-risk weapons away from low-risk individuals.
Attempts to improve the effectiveness of buyback programs have met with little success. Unhappy with the response to its earlier efforts, Boston took several steps to improve the impact of the 2006 buyback — offering a $200 Target gift card for each handgun (but none for long guns) and providing alternate drop-off locations that weren’t in police stations. However, it also required everyone turning in a gun to present ID (to keep out-of-staters from cashing in worthless old handguns). Result: the turn-in numbers for 2006 were at best no better than in ’93 and ’94.
Some will say we need a national buyback program. Ignore the fact that such a program is politically impossible in the U.S. — would it work? To get an idea we can look to Australia, which banned some long guns following a 1996 massacre in which 35 were killed and 23 others wounded by a gunman using assault rifles. As part of the ban, the government launched a nationwide program offering market value for the newly prohibited weapons. The take was 650,000 guns, about 20 percent of the country’s firearms.
Granted, Australia was a special case — an island nation can control its borders more easily than most places. More important, the buyback was attached to a gun ban — those who hung on to illegal weapons faced criminal charges.
Even so, the impact of Australia’s program is disputed. One study found no benefits at all, while another claimed the homicide rate decreased 5 to 10 percent. Gun-related suicides decreased significantly, but the overall suicide rate didn’t.
True, yet another study credited the Australian buyback with a 74 percent decrease in the gun suicide rate and a 35 to 50 percent decrease in the gun homicide rate. But the evidence for attributing the gun homicide drop to the buyback is unpersuasive. Gun and non-gun homicides fell at the same rate between 1995 and 2006. While gun homicides were somewhat more common than the non-gun kind 30 years ago and are less common now, the reversal happened circa 1988, well before the buyback.
This doesn’t mean gun buybacks do no good whatsoever. They put a few bucks in the pockets of people like you who want to get rid of unwanted firearms, and conceivably they reduce accidents from “unloaded” guns lying around the house. But overall, do they reduce gun killings, or killings period? Don’t kid yourself. No.
Ping!
It makes the naive feel good. And the taxpayer feel cheated.
Also I recall that many cities take the weapons collected, turn around and sell them.
The benefit in a “buyBACK” is the propaganda idea that the actual owner has no right to own them.
And, oddly, it enables criminal gangs in that they can dispose of “hot” firearms with “no questions”.
When criminals get into office they enable other criminals.
Do these buyback programs take zip guns?
I bet I could turn a tidy profit putting some together in the garage the night before and selling them at the buyback for 2-4x the cost.
One New York artist actually did that on a large scale in order to fund his project’s.
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2012/06/15/artsy-zip-guns/
I don’t about zip guns, but I’ve heard about people turning similar profit on pot-metal .25s and the like.
I’ll point out another problem that you tend to see in the south. Older guys get into buying and trading guns...build up a small collection...then pass away. The widow sits there for ten to twenty years...knows about the dozen guns sitting in the basement but doing nothing. The widow finally passes away, and some relative gets the house and contents...finds a number of mildly rusting guns, that now have no value.
So new owner discovers some town nearby, which offers the buyback program, and carries the guns in questionable condition over. In this case, it might be worthwhile....although it’s tax-payer funding that usually pays for the weapons in questionable condition.
I’ll point out another problem that you tend to see in the south. Older guys get into buying and trading guns...build up a small collection...then pass away. The widow sits there for ten to twenty years...knows about the dozen guns sitting in the basement but doing nothing. The widow finally passes away, and some relative gets the house and contents...finds a number of mildly rusting guns, that now have no value.
So new owner discovers some town nearby, which offers the buyback program, and carries the guns in questionable condition over. In this case, it might be worthwhile....although it’s tax-payer funding that usually pays for the weapons in questionable condition.
Do gun buyback programs accomplish anything useful?
No, they don’t.
There, fixed it fou you!
Regards,
The story said the typical buyback yielded 1000 guns.
And that is complete and unmitigated BS by the author. One only has to read newspaper accounts to see that even in large metro areas the number of "buybacks" is in the range of 200-500 and even those are suspect. Next time you see an article about such take a careful look at any photographs. Usually there is a table with maybe 30 or so recognizable weapons. Were the programs as effective as touted you can bet your last dollar that the PR and PD folk would mound them up for the photo op for max propaganda optics.
Regards,
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