TTAG’s been railing against gun buybacks since we first hit the ‘net. The programs are expensive and ineffective. Unless, of course, you’re a politician looking to be seen to be “doing something” about “gun violence.” Then it’s someone else’s money and your kudos. By the same token it’s no surprise that anti-gun agitators love gun buybacks. They provide a platform for their relentless campaign of firearms vilification and disarmament. And then there’s the media, delighted to show viewers images of guns—GUNS—while patting themselves on the back for providing a “community service.” So, even though gun buybacks are to crime control what schnauzers are to MENSA, the practice continues. And continues to spread. What a waste, on every level.
I’ll never understand why people turn stuff in at these events. I wish I lived somewhere near one I’d stand out side and offer $10 more then the buy back was and see what I could get for a steal.
Most have had the guns for years, have no interest in them, and don’t know any other way to get rid of them. Many are even scared to walk into a gun store and try to sell them.
There was an interview with a young woman who turned in multiple long guns at the Seattle event earlier in the year. She said that her father had left them to her when he died, but she was scared of them and didn’t want anything to do with them.
Throwing away family heirlooms for a couple gift cards. Pathetic.
Hoplophobia is alive, well, and growing stronger every day.
I’ve got a DB380 that is so unreliable that I have permanently shelved it in my safe. I have replaced it with a Bodyguard .380 for warm weather carry. If I could get a couple hundred bucks from a buyback, I’d totally turn it in.
Knowing how bad the gun is, I couldn’t bring myself sell/give it to anyone who would actually use it.
I have a Walter p22 that needs some work. It does fire just not every-time. It was like $200 used and that was 1,000’s of rounds ago. Just waiting for a good gift card offering to turn it in.
Thanks
Robert
I have to wonder how many cold cases stay cold due to the weapon being destroyed by police with no questions asked.
I’ll bet each one is test fired for ballistics comparison and dusted for pronts before it’s “destroyed.” And since it’s the Mass. hill country in the Fall, I’d bet a few deer rifles “vanish” before they can be logged in…
I wish they did a buy back in Florida. Maybe I could get $250 for the crap Jimenez 22 I bought on impulse.
Sometimes they even pay $50 for bb guns… Go to wal mart, buy a few dozen of the cheapass $20 BB guns, and turn them in for a nice profit!
In NJ, BB guns are legally considered to be firearms, requiring the same paperwork. I have some non-working guns in my collection that I have been saving for a local buyback. I’d LOVE to get some cash for them to use on a decent gun and /or ammo.
Seriously? BB guns are considered firearms in NJ? Damn glad I am in Texas
Yep, gotta love this state.
Hop over the river to America and you can get a BB gun at the Walmart checkout with your milk and eggs. If you’re dumb enough to actually buy it in NJ you need an FID card (and potentially a pistol purchase permit with requisite 5 month wait) to get one.
About New Jersey….that is just so irritating that it may require a separate post to rant that long…. Maybe I’ll actually ask to write one
Someone involved in the program says, “Getting an automatic weapon off the streets is really a great thing” as they show an SKS. I’m shocked…shocked! that a gun grabber doesn’t know the first thing about firearms.
Guns “on the streets”
Interesting, how did they know that the gun owner was homeless?
Maybe the gun itself was homeless?
Maybe it was found laying on a park bench?
I absolutely hate that phrase about guns being “on the streets” when they were really in someone’s closet, basement, or safe.
“On the street” = “Privately owned”.
abc40 and Fox 6 is your locally-owned source for Western Massachusetts news, weather and sports featuring its most-experienced news team with…
This is WKRP in Springfield Mass. They’re more used to covering selectman’s meetings and church suppers. Gun buybacks are like a two-headed calf being born – something new and different. “Look at us, we’re just like Boston!” Rubes…
I’m looking forward to the next buyback in Seattle. I’ve got a broken Kel-Tec PF9, and I would come out ahead turning it in compared to paying for shipping and having it repaired back at the factory, then selling it. Sad, but I’ll never make that mistake again.
What Color grip / slide?
I’m in grad school, and would love to be able to get a few spare parts off of it for my PF-9. Starting out on my own this spring with my soon to be wife!
So the scariest thing they picked up was an SKS that they thought might be an automatic weapon? That will probably end up in some cop’s collection.
Anyway, they just collected guns that the current owners likely never use. That will prevent crimes for sure. What percentage of guns are stolen then used in crimes? Pretty low I’m guessing. So they might have lowered the chances of one of those guns being used in a crime by some very small fraction of a percent.
If they go to bed feeling better, and have no money or time left to spend pushing some more obnoxious gun control measures, I guess I can live with that. I don’t try to stop my dog from chewing up an old beat up shoe if it will keep him from working over a pair of shoes I actually wear. Similar concept here, perhaps. The only serious drawback is that they often use taxpayer money for this crap.
i like you can get killer deals on some good rifles (im a milsurp die )
I love How the DA refers to an SKS as an “automatic weapon”… I also like how the news story infers that there would be 80% less suicides if guns couldn’t be privately owned. Additionally the looping of suicides in with gun related crimes makes “gun violence” statistics more than double to suit their political agenda.
I also like how the news story infers that there would be 80% less suicides if guns couldn’t be privately owned.
(*cough*) Japan (*cough*)
In Japan people jump in front of trains. There are trains here, but not as common. I wonder how people that use guns here would off themselves if they didn’t have the guns?
I always wondered why more people don’t take themselves out via the “Thelma and Louise” method…drive off the edge of the Grand Canyon (or some other convenient cliff). Seems rather straightforward, and unlikely to fail.
Linda should be blaming herself and her son, not the gun. I know that’s cold, however my grndfather committed suicide with a gun, and we the whole family blamed him not the gun. If someone wants to go they will find a way.
Life sucks, imma gonna end it. Oh… wait a minute… I don’t have a gun. Dang it! I’m just going to have to go on living and never think of this again.
Nope, can’t be…
No such thing as a bad parenting or an adult making decisions for themselves, the gun made him do.
I personally love gun buy backs. I picked a beautiful 1970s mini-14 for $150 bucks at our last one. Most everything else brought through was antique or broken. No skin off my nose and my safe is a little better stocked.
Let the bastards go broke buying rusted POS firearms. It’s good for us and the economy.
Yep, that is EXACTLY what I have been saving for such an event if they have one locally. Unfortunately, I heard about the last 2 a week after they happened.
There’s some boy scout group outside of Chicago that rounds up dilapidated guns out of the rivers, swamps, ground, and broken firearms out of people’s collections and sell them off at the buybacks in Chicago. They then go and spend that money on ammunition and other costs for boy-scout retreats! I think they were getting close to $200 a pop one time.
So proud of them building a new generation of responsible gun owners by getting cash from an anti-gun effort.
I’m not sure what you have against gun buy backs. They’re wasteful (of grabber money), useless, and only collect guns from people who don’t want them to begin with. While altruistically I think that waste for it’s own sake and the willful destruction of items of intrinsic value is evil and perverted, I’m not sure where the down side is for our cause. It’s not as if there as so few guns that the handful they destroy alters either the market or the reality of gun ownership. Let them waste money on their theater, it gets them nowhere.
They’re wasteful (of grabber money)
Except when they’re taxpayer funded…then they’re wasteful of our money.
you do realize in several jurisdictions there are pushes to finance these buybacks with taxes and fees on firearms and or ammo?
Move to a free state. Taxpayer funded gun buy backs are an exclusive feature of place that are already behind enemy lines. Such places already waste tax money in so many ways that this is a drop in the ocean.
I’m going to move to another state so my tax dollars are used to kill unborn children or fund illegal aliens college tuition instead of civilian disarmament. uhhhhh no! in any state your tax dollars will be wasted on something you don’t believe in. i would rather there just be no gun buy backs so there is one less thing to waste tax $ on.
no lie, i almost started to cry when i saw the sks on its way for destruction.
i put gun buy backs about on the same sadness level as dog fights.
Farago how many times have you used the word ‘agitprop’ in the course of your career as a professional blogger? Seriously I have been wondering!
Standard buyback, lots of old, unused, crappy guns. My dad has an ancient, unserviceable .22 could probbly be traded in at a buyback for more than it’s worth.
But as with most buybacks, still some good guns going to waste. Shame ’bout that SKS.
I’d like to take a bunch of scrap pipe nails and washers to a gun buy back and turn them in as zip gun parts kits for $100 each. Suck it grabbers.
I wonder what I’d have to do to host my own gun buy back in CO?? Sheeple seem content to trade in fire arms all day long for gift cards.. seems a simple enough equation to me… maybe out of a 100 guns, I could end up with a couple of serviceable rifles/pistols..
Unless you have an FFL, no can do in Colorado.
I was just typing a similar reply…
I wonder what I’d have to do to host my own gun buy back in CO??
Have an FFL handy so that each transferor can have the newly-required background check performed.
Interestingly, in the new CRS 18-12-112, the requirement for the background check is on both the transferor and the transferee. If the transferor is not an FFL, he must arrange for a background check by an FFL – the subsection that requires this makes no exception for the case where the transferee is an FFL. It appears that if you’re selling a gun to your LGS FFL, you’d have to pay that FFL to perform a background check on himself.
From Jeff
Guns “on the streets”
Interesting, how did they know that the gun owner was homeless?
Maybe the gun itself was homeless?
Maybe it was found laying on a park bench?
I absolutely hate that phrase about guns being “on the streets” when they were really in someone’s closet, basement, or safe.
On the contrary:
“Guns on the street”, “Getting Guns off the street” are terms affectionately used by Anti gunners to project an image.
Gang bangers, robbers and drug dealers don’t have business offices. They do their business “on the street”. Thus “getting them off the street is just a mental/visual linking phrase to say “we are getting them out of the hands of criminals.”
When the President says that AR’s have no place on the streets of America, we know they are not on the streets, they are in our safe, in a case in the trunk on the way to the range or at the range. When he and the Huff Post use the term “streets”, we know that they want to associate whatever gun they are talking about with thugs, crime and drive byes.
The buy backs don’t get guns off the streets, it gets them out of closets and musty basements.
Nifty wording:
Guns on the streets are bad.
Guns off the streets are a good thing.
What does this have to do with us?
P.S.
We could only hope those buy back guns stayed on the streets to render the thug carting them harmless except that he would only be armed with a club.