Gun Feelgood Programs
That's what gun buyback programs should be called. They should not be called useful, productive, smart, or anything along those lines.
And the reason is obvious!
Good guns are worth a lot of money. Are people really going to turn in good guns for a bit of money? Unlikely! But a rusty unusable gun...!
Gun buyback programs are quite costly -- and quite ineffective at stopping gun violence -- yet they persist, writes Jon Miltmore at FEE:
The first ever US gun buyback occurred in Baltimore in 1974. Citizens were paid $50 ($259 in 2019 dollars) for any firearms they turned in, researchers said, and the city collected some 13,500 firearms. The cost? Some $660,000.This is just one city. Costs are substantially larger at the national level. Australia's massive 1996 gun buyback program, for example, collected 640,000 firearms, costing taxpayers some $230 million. A buyback on that scale in the US would involve the collection of about 78.6 million firearms, researchers said. The cost would likely be tens of billions of dollars.
In the US, however, gun buybacks tend to occur at the local level. Nevertheless, costs can run surprisingly high, since there is little incentive to control spending. The lack of spending oversight has at times manifested itself in comical ways.
In 2019, for example, YouTuber Royal Nonesuch was able to make $300 by selling several "pipe guns" he made out of scrap--he described them as "the crappiest guns" he ever made-- to the state of Missouri. Officials at the event didn't seem to care or even notice, evidenced by the fact that the individual who paid Nonesuch never bothered to inspect the firearms.
Economist Daniel Mitchell offered an anecdote that is perhaps even more amusing. During Baltimore's 2018 gun buyback, Mitchell noticed the city was offering people $25 for every "high-capacity" magazine they turned in.
The problem?
A quick online search revealed that some magazines could be purchased for between $11-$13. This meant a clever entrepreneur could have purchased a car full of magazines and turned them into the city to make a quick, hefty profit at the expense of taxpayers (and to the benefit of gun manufacturers).
So why these programs?
If a preponderance of evidence shows gun buybacks are ineffective and costly, it invites an important question: why are they so popular with local governments?The answer can be found in public choice theory, an economic concept pioneered by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan that essentially says government officials make decisions based on self-interest just like everyone else.
Gun buybacks may not be good policy, but it turns out they are great politics--especially in cities plagued by gun violence.
For starters, an abundance of research tends to agree that buybacks are relatively popular with the public. The policies have the appearance of being "voluntary" (except, of course, for the wealth that was taxed to make the purchase), and are easier to pass and less controversial than gun control laws. This allows politicians and bureaucrats to show they are "doing something" to reduce gun violence in cities. Meanwhile, the only real costs of gun buybacks--tax revenues essentially wasted--are widely dispersed, which, as F.A. Hayek once pointed out, makes them "difficult to see."
I suspect that if Isab had not spent years praticing range discipline, she'd blow a blood vessel on this occasion, for several reasons. Me, I have medication today to mellow me.
One of the wonderful things about the buyback custom is that it's Federally illegal. That Treasury agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives maintains that no one "not in the business" may engage in transactions without keeping detailed records in the Federally-mandated format - which buyback people never do because they'd scare people off.
The second thing that should bother every American is a program is often called "buyback" when it's mandatory. Oh, so the alternative to this is a felony? This happens when the State decides to seize power, nothing more, and it arrives in a hail of lies and broken promises, enacted by people whose in-depth security is paid for by the people they rob.
Locales that enact controls about these things blatantly reject the idea that if you do not have a crime problem, you cannot have a "gun problem". Yet your moral superiors have convinced you that just seeing a gun is time to panic, to call SWAT and to shriek that the offender be jailed. Some teach kids this.
For having a gadget that burns tree bark to spit a hunk of metal. Fear!
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Advocates of fiscal responsibility should notice that the Federal documentation requirements mean that a licensed gun dealer can't take in these guns for resale, despite the abiity to determine their integrity and to return them to lawful status in Federal databases. Rather than pay $50 for a $400 revolver and sell it for a $350 profit minus handling to a responsible person, it will simply be destroyed.
We're up to over 350 million guns in the USA IIRC, due to government virtue-signalling that they want to install central planning. Thanks, Democrats*!
*inserted to shut Art and others up about those few others who want confiscation who belong to other organizations. Both of them.
Radwaste at May 14, 2021 3:50 AM
A "buyback"* program is nothing more than an opportunity to upgrade the armory, for some legal owners. Turn in some crap guns that may not have worked reliably and go purchase a decent firearm with the cash. Smart people will try to intervene and outbid the "buyback" program for anything decent that is being turned in. Private sale doesn't have to go through an FFL, in most states anyway.
For illegal owners, it's an easy way to get rid of evidence of a firearm used in a crime, since it's unlikely anyone will check serial numbers to see if it was stolen (assuming there were any left on it) or do any sort of ballistic check.
*The people running "buyback" programs never sold the weapon in the first place, so cannot honestly say they are buying back anything. It's really just a buy program. I always wonder if the police sift through what gets collected and keep the best for themselves, or for throwaways.
ruralcounsel at May 14, 2021 4:36 AM
"I always wonder if the police sift through what gets collected and keep the best for themselves, or for throwaways." ~Ruralcounsel
Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. There have been more than a few documented cases where the officer handling the 'buyback' saw something nice and outbid the program. There are also more than a few examples of officers complaining that they couldn't do that.
Ben at May 14, 2021 5:44 AM
And then there are enterprising people who take full advantage.
https://blade-city.com/blogs/gun-knife-blog/man-makes-pipe-guns-from-scrap-sells-them-to-gun-buyback-program-for-300
I R A Darth Aggie at May 14, 2021 7:18 AM
I started taking blood pressure meds a few years ago.
They seem to be helpful is allowing me to mentally deal with the Cheney situation, and also the abomination that passes for a state to the south of us.
Wyoming is not a state that has any need for a gun *buy back” and I don’t expect to ever see one here.
Isab at May 14, 2021 7:24 AM
One of the longstanding complaints about gun buyback programs is that they allow criminals to dispose of guns used in the commission of crimes. Police typically don't check the guns bought back or take names, as an incentive to get people to participate.
It used to be that smart criminals, wiped the gun and ditched it at the scene (and took the cannoli). But with fingerprint and DNA collection technology today, even a wiped gun can yield clues.
Buybacks allow those guns to be disappeared.
Conan the Grammarian at May 14, 2021 7:39 AM
Isab, maybe my memory's slipping, but which state did you mean and why?
Lenona at May 14, 2021 10:10 PM
Isab, maybe my memory's slipping, but which state did you mean and why?
Lenona at May 14, 2021 10:10 PM
Colorado.
Isab at May 15, 2021 6:42 AM
And why, unless you meant its reputation for shootings?
(I was guessing there could be other reasons.)
Lenona at May 15, 2021 7:20 AM
And why, unless you meant its reputation for shootings?
(I was guessing there could be other reasons.)
Lenona at May 15, 2021 7:20 AM
The legalization of marijuana, nonsensical onerous gun laws, high crime, high taxes, and single party control of the government have been enough to ruin most places in Colorado.
Isab at May 15, 2021 7:57 AM
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