“The time is always right to do what’s right,” the great civil rights leader (and gun owner) Martin Luther King once said. He was right in so many ways. Earlier this week, some do-gooders in Decatur, Illinois announced an upcoming gun “buyback” scheduled for Friday afternoon, April 2nd from 2:00p to 6:00p.
Sponsors have dubbed the event the “Decatur Community Day of Peace.”
They aren’t pinching pennies, either. They will be paying big bucks for firearms at this peaceful family event. How much? $225 for revolvers and semi-auto pistols. While that sum might not flip your skirt (or your kilt) for modern handguns, consider hundred-year-old clunker pistols that might not even shoot. After all, I doubt they’ll test-fire the guns surrendered.
Even more remarkably, they are were paying even better prices for magazines. $35 for AR magazines – more than double the street price of brand new PMags. They’re also offering $25 for other 10+ round semi-auto magazines.
It seems that the sponsors got word of their idiocy and repealed the magazine “buyback.”
This from the City of Decatur Facebook page just minutes ago.
***** UPDATED INFORMATION *****
Due to an overwhelming number of calls, we are providing additional information to the public to address many of the common questions we have received as well to provide additional information.
This program was set up to work with the community to get illegal guns off the street and keep them out of the hands of criminals and children.
Illegal guns? Out of the hands of criminals? Have these clueless knuckleheads ever been to a gun “buyback” event? I’ve been to dozens and the criminal types are the LAST people who will show up, with a dozen or more cops swarming the area.
Besides, they’re calling this a “family event” (see promo poster below)? So you can cancel those plans you had to clean up while arbitraging a couple of cases of new AR mags.
MAGAZINES will NO LONGER be accepted. Too many people have already planned to take advantage of this option.
Only operable firearms will be accepted. The Chief of Police and/or other event organizers present at the collection site reserve the right to make the final decision on whether or not to accept any firearm, as well the number of firearms accepted per person.
They must have gotten an earful from the people who read the Guns Save Life post about the event that went up yesterday within minutes of the original announcement. Hint: don’t take more than two or three guns per person to the event.
For additional information, you can also all DPD at 217-424-2743 or 217-424-2723.
Decatur Community Day of Peace
April 2, 2021
2pm-6pm
Community Church of God
333 S Martin Luther King Jr. Dr.
Folks, this remains a perfect opportunity to help these do-gooders get unwanted jam-o-matic broken-down junk out of your trunk and put some presidents in your pocketbook.
It’s the right thing to do! How do we know? Well, the sponsors quote gun owner Dr. Martin Luther King himself. We have to wonder if the sponsors of the Decatur event know of the civil rights giant’s affinity for gun ownership for the little people.
Dr. King knew that the only thing that stops bad bigots with evil in their hearts is a good guy with a gun. On the other hand, gun “buybacks” have never thwarted a violent criminal attack or hate crime. Not even once.
Dr. King was a wise and prudent man. He faced a lot of racists and bigots in his home state of Alabama. In 1956 he applied for a carry permit after his house was bombed. The local police chief arbitrarily denied the application, claiming Dr. King didn’t have a need.
Welcome to racist gun control “may-issue” laws that gave bigoted local police and sheriffs the right to discriminate under Jim Crow.
One issue on everyone’s mind this Martin Luther King Jr. day was gun control. King’s calls for resolving our differences through peaceful nonviolence are especially poignant after [scumbag’s name redacted] gunned down six people and wounded several others in Tucson. Amid the clamor for new gun laws, its appropriate to remember King’s complicated history with guns.
Most people think King would be the last person to own a gun. Yet in the mid-1950s, as the civil rights movement heated up, King kept firearms for self-protection. In fact, he even applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
A recipient of constant death threats, King had armed supporters take turns guarding his home and family. He had good reason to fear that the Klan in Alabama was targeting him for assassination…
William Worthy, a journalist who covered the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, reported that once, during a visit to King’s parsonage, he went to sit down on an armchair in the living room and, to his surprise, almost sat on a loaded gun. Glenn Smiley, an adviser to King, described King’s home as “an arsenal.”
As I found researching my new book, Gunfight, in 1956, after King’s house was bombed, King applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama. The local police had discretion to determine who was a suitable person to carry firearms. King, a clergyman whose life was threatened daily, surely met the requirements of the law, but he was rejected nevertheless. At the time, the police used any wiggle room in the law to discriminate against African Americans.
Sadly, Guns Save Life, the Illinois group famous for exchanging rusty, broken down bangsticks for cash for kids’ shooting programs has run out of broken down guns. I serve as the Executive Director for GSL and we took our last batch of guns to Chicago a couple of weeks ago and came back with a cool grand in cash (not pictured above… that was 2019’s haul) for teaching young people how to shoot safely and effectively.
Here’s the promo literature for the upcoming Decatur, event, courtesy of the City of Decatur’s Facebook page.
For prices offered like those, this event is way too good and the cause way too important to keep news to ourselves. After all, what’s really important is that we all come together to help the Decatur Community Day of Peace be the successful family event the organizers are hoping for.
Bring your broken down, antiquated handguns on Friday, April 2nd from 2:00p to 6:00p at 333 S. Martin Luther King Drive, Decatur, Illionois. Better get there early because with an offer like this, the fools and their money will soon be parted.