Hartford Buyback Program To Turn Guns Into Gardening Tools the headline at courant.com proclaims. Swords into plowshares, geddit? Aside from that marketing ploy, there’s nothing new — or valuable — about Hartford, Connecticut’s “buy back” program. It’s still a case of taxpayer money being squandered on “feel good” political theater. But check this out . . .
Guns turned in can be exchanged for gift cards, ranging in value from $450 for an assault rifle to $100 for a shotgun.
We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: offering money for firearms with no questions asked incentivizes thieves to steal guns. The greater the “reward” for tendered guns, the higher the likelihood that the cash will inspire bad guys to break into people’s homes to remove valuable guns.
In other words, the $450 bounty for “assault rifles” creates crime, rather than eliminates it.
In other other words, the “long-term partnership between Mothers United, Hartford police, and the Newtown Action Alliance” has created a criminal fencing operation for stolen property.
Connecticut General Statutes 53a-119 – Larceny states that . . .
A person is guilty of larceny by receiving stolen property if he receives, retains, or disposes of stolen property knowing that it has probably been stolen or believing that it has probably been stolen, unless the property is received, retained or disposed of with purpose to restore it to the owner.
What are the odds that any of the surrendered “assault rifles” will be stolen? Who knows? Not the police. Of course, they could run a trace on the guns, right? But they don’t. Because guns.
Bottom line: receiving stolen goods isn’t larceny if the police and anti-gunners do it. In case you didn’t know.