The futility of gun turn-ins(Il)

chicagotribune.com ^ | 17 June, 2012 | Steve Chapman

[marktwain]

If you've got some clothes you don't need anymore, you can give them to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. If you have an old car, you can call various organizations to take it away. And if you're in Chicago and have a gun that's burning a hole in your pocket, you can get rid of it June 23, no questions asked.

The city government has a great fondness for gun turn-in events. It's done six of them in the past six years, collecting more than 23,000 weapons. This one will be held at 23 churches, and anyone handing over a firearm will get a $100 gift card. The guns will then be destroyed.

The motive behind these efforts is not hard to understand in a place that had 433 murders last year and has seen a spike this year. Dozens of shootings take place in Chicago every week.

Two years ago, explaining the effort, then-Mayor Richard M. Daleysaid, "We have just too many guns in our society. When someone has access to a gun, they use it." The gun buyback is a way "we can reduce the number of guns on our streets," says Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

But don't put too much stock in those pronouncements. The number of privately owned guns in America keeps rising, and at last count it totaled 270 million, or about one for every adult. But nationally, the homicide rate has fallen by half over the past two decades.

Contrary to Daley, most people who own guns never use them for anything but legal purposes (hunting, target shooting, self-defense). Contrary to Emanuel, the weapons this sort of venture yields are probably not the ones carried in the streets or the ones used in crimes. The reduction also represents a minuscule share of the firearms in

[marktwain]

Gun turn-ins are all about de-legitimizing guns. They have the air of a symbolic sacrafice. There is no rational for them otherwise. They destroy valuable assets for no useful purpose, other than to possibly increase the demand for new guns, thus increasing the profits of gun manufacturers.

If the guns were sold to gun dealers, the profit used to reduced taxes, then there might be some legitimacy in taking unused assets and bringing them back into productive use.

[MNDude]

“Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck noted in a 1996 book that when St. Louis did a gun buyback, those participating “were commonly middle-aged and 80 percent white, while those involved in gun violence in that city were mostly young and black.””

Uh oh. A racist statement.

[Molon Labbie]

And you know where those young, black guys get their guns?

From the burglarized houses and cars of middle aged white guys.

Or the pawn shops where the white guys pawned them because he’s just trying to keep up with his upside down mortgage in the effed up economy.

Or the little white girl that goes into Cabelas or Bass Pro Shop once a week to straw purchase them for gang members.

I tell people, hold on to your guns, sell something else, anything else, but hold onto your guns.

[bgill]

When someone has access to a gun, they use it

Too bad the same can't be said about libs and their brains.

[StAnDeliver]

"If the guns were sold to gun dealers, the profit used to reduced taxes, then there might be some legitimacy in taking unused assets and bringing them back into productive use."

IF you took them to dealers far away from the barrio and the Amish. Otherwise buybacks in Cabrini Green merely enhance the value of guns in Aurora...

[Average Al]

Wasn’t there a story about some guys making a bunch of cheap zip guns and turning them in to make a whopping profit
somewhere in CA in the last few weeks?

[marktwain]

There are very few gun dealers in urban ghettos, and they are not allowed to sell to criminals. There are plenty of decent people who could use guns to defend themselves.