TTAG’s been highlighting the abject, indeed inescapable stupidity of gun buybacks since this website went live. Gun buybacks do sweet FA to reduce firearms-related crime, destroy valuable evidence of firearms-related crimes and encourage firearms-related crime (by creating a no-risk market for stolen firearms). They waste taxpayer money through police overtime and padded pensions. The logic for gun buybacks: any gun “taken off the street” is one less gun that might – might – available to criminals. Like criminals have trouble getting guns. Or you could prove that buybacks reduce criminal access. Anyway, here’s one I’ve never heard before, from a journalist no less . . .
According to the news babe above, buybacks are boffo because you can’t complain about gun violence unless you disarm and, thus, “have a stake in the game.” Huh? Let’s try that again . . .
So these may not be the weapons that may be used necessarily by a criminal, but they’re weapons that could still be used in the commission of a crime; so if you’re going to complain about gun violence this is the first step you can take and experts say it’s not going to curb crime but at least it gets you into the game. You’re engaged enough in your community to know it’s a problem and you have some power in doing something about it.
There’s only one explanation for this “puddle of consciousness” justification for this obvious example of expensive, pointless “security theater”: Maryland. The reporter works behind the lines, where gun control has become a way of life, a way of speaking. Thinking? Not so much. Maybe not at all.