New York City Gun Buyback
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
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By Larry Keane

New York City’s accidental Mayor, Bill de Blasio, has made some deliberately bad decisions in his attempts to curb the Big Apple’s recent surge in criminal violence. New York City is seeing the same destruction as cities like Seattle, Portland, Oregon, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Mayor de Blasio’s “vague plan” to stop the violence though includes proposals that simply don’t work and there’s plenty of evidence that says so.

$1.5 Billion in Cuts

New York City criminal shootings skyrocketed while riots and looting left law enforcement exasperated. A recent weekend in July saw 64 New Yorkers shot including the murder of a young father walking with his 6-year old daughter in broad daylight. That same week in mid-July marked a 253 percent increase in shootings over the same week in 2019. But New York City police made just 21 arrests in cases involving crimes with a firearm, a nearly 75 percent drop from the same week last year.

It was as predictable as it is disappointing. Mayor de Blasio went along with anti-police activists and in June pushed through city budget cuts including $1.5 billion less to the New York City police department. The cuts cost New Yorkers police academy classes, overtime for police at a time when they’re stretched thin, scrapping a planned new police precinct in Queens, N.Y. and eliminating 1,163 police officer positions.

In announcing the budget cuts, Mayor de Blasio missed the seriousness of the situation.

“I am excited to say that we have a plan that can achieve real reform, that can achieve real redistribution, and at the same time ensure that we keep our city safe, and we make sure that our officers are on patrol where we need them around this city,” he said.

The effects of these “real reforms” have been felt quickly and permanently for the families of the victims of crime.

Now after immediate increases in criminal misuse of firearms and more fatalities in the city, Mayor de Blasio announced his “End Gun Violence Plan” that reinstated many of the cuts he previously made, only with different wording.

Announcing the new police force focuses on safety in the city, Mayor de Blasio was joined by New York City Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea, but gave few specifics. The two “provided no details on the plan, or could even say, when pressed by The [New York] Post, how many officers will be redeployed to fight the rise in shootings,” the Post reported.

The Buy-back Plan is Unserious

If there were any giveaway that the mayor’s firearm crime plans are unserious, it is evidenced by his gun “buy-back” program, including events in the very places where criminal gun crime is the highest. Gun buy-backs are designed to offer citizens money rewards to turn over firearms, no questions asked.

These efforts are sometimes termed “compensated confiscation” efforts as the city authorities never sold the firearms in the first place. In addition, those turning in their firearms are likely the least likely to commit violent crimes with those firearms. Gun buy-backs don’t work and the evidence is overwhelming.

One study completed by SUNY New Buffalo State university analyzed the results of five separate buy-back programs between 2007-2012. Researcher Scott W. Phillips summed up the evidence, stating “Does it [gun buy-backs] work? No…Should they keep doing it? I wouldn’t bother wasting their time.”

Mayor de Blasio probably didn’t read that study before including the buy-backs in his proposal.

Mayor Bill de Blasio paints while New Yorkers are being shot.  (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

That’s not all. A National Institute of Justice memo released during the Obama Administration said the same thing, including that 82 percent of law enforcement professionals call buy-backs ineffective at reducing violent crime. Mayor de Blasio likely didn’t read that study either. One could easily conclude he isn’t serious about reducing gun crimes.

Real Solutions

Members of the firearm industry, however, are serious about reducing the criminal misuse of firearms through NSSF’s Real Solutions. Safer Communities campaign. Project ChildSafe has distributed more than 38 million firearm safety kits, including free gun locks, through partnerships with 15,000 law enforcement agencies to reduce accidental and unintentional firearm injuries.

Operation Secure Store is a partnership effort with ATF to educate and assist firearm retailers to voluntarily improve security through affordable options to reduce theft and burglaries. Don’t Lie for the Other Guy helps ATF to educate retailers on the warning signs of a possible illegal straw purchase, or when someone attempts to buy a gun for someone who doesn’t want their name associated with that sale. That program reminds the public of a possible $250,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison for committing this serious crime.

NSSF’s FixNICS campaign changed the law in 16 states and in Congress to improve submissions of disqualifying adjudicated mental health records. Since 2013, this resulted in a 241 percent increase of disqualifying records submitted to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) helping to keep guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill.

These efforts have all paid off as the instances of unintentional firearm fatalities reached the lowest levels on record in over one hundred years and violent crime continues to trend lower, all while firearm ownership is at historic highs. These are real solutions, unlike Mayor de Blasio’s political theater.

 

Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

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31 COMMENTS

  1. Dear Bill,

    Please send me that $1.5 Billion. I promise to buy up all the guns, “high capacity ammunition feeding devices” and ammunition I can possibly locate in the greater NYC/Tri-State area, and have it all shipped far, far away from you. I’ll even buy up all I can from cities and states you specify, and have that shipped far away from you too. I’m sure volunteers can be found out in the Wild Wild West to help carry the load and provide secure, common sense safe storage so those guns will never bother you or your daydreams ever again.

    Smile Bill, the sun will come out tomorrow!

    Hugs & Kisses,
    Enuf

    • enuf…You and the insane deblosio are both self serving slanderous, libelous POTUS hating lowlifes. Your hugs and kisses are plastered all over deblasio’s gun control democRat behind.
      Frankly…your time would be better spent organizing your anthony weiner photos.

    • What $1.5 Billion?
      The subway system, and just the subway system, needs $4 Billion in work done from years of financial neglect.
      That $1.5 Billion cut is an actual needed thing in an overly policed city. But that’s not what the rich actually want.
      These same cops will violate every single one of your constitutional rights, besides the basic amoral corruption Union backed cops usually wallow in, so the Politicians want them. So how do you keep wasting money on a huge corrupt police force who think rights are for the rich?
      You need a bit of murder theater first, then comes the money. A few short months of belt tightening will provide decades of pork barrel spending on these same cops.
      When they come for you, just remember you thought our police state was a good idea.

    • I am now getting paid every month more than $31,000 by doing very easy job online from home. I have earned $31540 last month from this easy job just by giving this job only 2 to 3 hrs a day using my laptop. Everybody on this earth can now get this job and sctart making more cash online just by follow instructions on this web page……………….Join Here   

  2. See what too much weed does to your brain, boys and girls?! Man, is he really that delusional, or does he think all his constituents are?

  3. So the plan is to end gun violence by selling them to the police, who in turn use their own guns to kill its citizens. Doesn’t have to be a gun, it could be a nightstick, a flashlight, the choke hold. Won’t matter because nobody’s fighting back because in his world, only the police need to carry a gun. Hitler had the same idea 80 years ago to disarm their “unreliables”, aka any minority he didn’t agree with and felt could fight back. Only difference is he wasn’t nice enough to write a check or send a walmart gift card.

  4. He’ll also buy up all the guns that have bodies attached to them, so any hope of using them as evidence against the shooter is lost. Another clever way to reduce incarceration!

    • With Magical Thinking Legislation, it doesn’t MATTER if it works or not, only that the legislation was passed. Most ‘gun-safety’ legislation is that way, so why should ‘Gun Buybacks’ be any different?

      Here’s the theory: There are 330 million firearms available in this country. NYC buys one. That leaves 329,999,999 left to go, granted, but that ONE GUN once destroyed will never be used to shoot anyone, so therefore GREAT progress has been made. Repeat this Magical Act another 329,999,999 times, and PRESTO! Ultimate Gun Safety achieved. Applause all ’round, pie and punch for everyone.

      Of course, people get tired of giving good public money out for worthless, rusty, broken hulks of elderly non-functional firearms after a bit, the whole process peters out in a couple of days, but still, everyone involved gets to feel GOOD about themselves, which is the whole point. Plus, they’ve had pie and punch.

      Another crisis averted.

      • The problem with the theory is that, after 330 million repetitions, you still haven’t run out of guns. More get smuggled in from outside the country or manufactured in clandestine machine shops. Then, there’s the problem that guns aren’t the only way for a criminal to harm someone. There’s a reason why British cops wear anti-stabbing vests.

  5. If one is to believe the numbers in the recent NSSF poll, gun control is already doomed as well as wholey un Constitutional .

    • Gun control may have lost steam with the general public, but it’s alive and well and still going strong in politics. Take Virginia for example. The gov just signed a mess of stuff into law last month and is holding a special session in August, where they already said they are gonna retry the AWB. And I’m betting it gets pushed through, since the gun owners are less likely to swarm Richmond in the current COVID environment. Or even our governor may ban the public from the capital altogether for the special session, for “social distancing”

      But of course protests are still a-ok.

  6. How much will they pay for a shotgun? I figure for well under $10 worth of Lowes stuff plus a few old inner tubes I could cobble up a slam-fire shottie. It might be worth my while to toss the makings for sever dozen of those in the trunk and take a road trip north if they’ll pay, oh, say hundred bucks a pop.

  7. When is someone going to paint MAGA in front of Trump Towers? I mean, CA had to remove a BLM street art because they made the street a public speaking venue and someone painted MAGA 2020 5 feet away from it… so they removed them both simply because they would lose that case and they knew it. Just going off the pic on this article… So if the dems can do it and waste tax payers money, why aren’t there republicans covering it up? Cowards. That symbol is the same as the confederate flag.

  8. hey DeBozo, go smoke some more weed and shup up. DeBozo is just a communist trying to have alot of crime that he and Comrade Cuomo are responsible for ( they created the situations that are happening) just so they can confiscate guns. the communist party’s ultimate goal is to disarm us so we cant fight back when there new order comes out. Cuomotose released criminals from jail into the population knowing all this would happen so they can push through their agenda.

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