How does selling your gun to the government, disarming yourself at the taxpayer’s expense, honor the victims of a spree killer? CBS knows! “Angela Atkins came to the Los Angeles gun buyback with two hunting rifles and thoughts of the children who died in Newtown, Connecticut. ‘It was emotional,’ she said. ‘I cried. And I just felt like those were everybody’s children.’ Asked if she is getting rid of her only guns, Atkins said: ‘Yeah. I couldn’t send them a sympathy card or anything, so I just said, ‘Well, that’s the best thing I can do.'” Double notprops to CBS for A) finding someone who made that illogical leap and B) not mentioning all the other participants at the no-questions-asked LA Gun Buyback who were motivated by cash or a desire to get rid of a gun used in a crime. Let’s switch to latimes.com and have a look at that action . . .
Cars queued up for blocks at the drive-through events, with the city giving cards worth up to $100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles, and up to $200 for assault weapons. There was a bit of haggling involved, but the guns were all taken.
“What do you got?” an officer in Van Nuys asked a man in his late twenties as he pulled up in a green Mazda.
“Just one handgun, I’ve had it since high school,” the man replied.
“Will you take $50 for this?”
“Sure.”
Many came bearing more than one gun. They pulled 22 pistols from the trunk of one white Honda, a haul that earned the driver $1,000.
Two men in a pickup truck with two children in the back seat handed over a rifle, a pistol and a MAC-12, altered with a silencer.
Again, no questions asked. So I’ll ask one: what the hell’s happened to our society when we vilify the means of our self-defense while paying criminals to destroy evidence of their crimes? Just wonderin’.
Meanwhile, that was the snapshot. Here’s proof of what CBS missed (i.e., the profit motive and no change whatsoever to the basic desire for armed self-defense):
“That young guy shot up all the kids and they blamed the mama because the mama had the weapons in the house,” Valerie Butler said, in explaining why she was waiting in line two hours in South Los Angeles to get rid of an old handgun.
Yet Butler, 50, said she was not getting rid of both of her guns.
“Just one,” she said, and laughed. “There’s a bunch of nuts out here, and they’re coming in when you’re sleeping. You got to protect yourself.”
. . .
“If I could get $100 of free groceries, it’s worth it,” said Charles Edwards, 60, waiting in line next to his old .22 revolver after driving to Los Angeles from Fontana. “I wouldn’t do it for $40. That’s why people are here. They feel bad about all that’s happening, but times are tough.”
He still has a shotgun at home. “That’s all I need,” he said.
Oh what the heck, another question: how much did the feelgood LA buyback cost taxpayers? The LA Times is strangely silent on this point. Let’s go with “a lot” and forget to add-in all the police overtime and administrative costs. And give the Times genuine props for ending their story this way.
By 2 p.m. in Van Nuys, the police began telling people they were out of gift cards.
“I’m not giving this away for free,” said Sam Ferrell of Reseda as he took a drag of his cigarette in his truck.
Ferrell said he was hoping to sell his stepson’s handgun. “There are too many kids being killed by these things,” he said.
He said he didn’t plan to turn in any of his own guns, but that he was glad his stepson didn’t have his.
“I need my gun, but not everyone who has one needs one,” he said.