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If a gun buyback falls flat on its face, does it make a noise? It does if it’s in Bradenton, Florida. At least it does in the opinion of Rev. Bill Parker, associate pastor of the New Life General Baptist Church. With contributions from the Palmetto Police and the Palmetto Community Redevelopment Agency (your tax dollars at work!) the church was offering $50 Visa gift cards for every heater hauled in…

Only no one (OK, one person) was doing any hauling. When asked if the single gun collected made the whole effort worthwhile, Rev. Parker responded, “It’s been a success because of that one gun…if you get one gun off the street, that could mean eight lives” are saved. We’re guessing the good reverend is a half-full kinda guy.

[h/t gunwire.com]

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23 COMMENTS

  1. Eight lives “could be” saved? I’m a product of the public schools so I don’t really understand that new math. Are my firearms underachievers because they haven’t take any lives?

  2. I’m willing to bet that silly little gun doesn’t even work. Anyone who wants to sell gun that has any sort of value will sell it to a dealer, because these buy backs are only for worthless crap.

  3. By the good Rev Parker’s estimation, the 90 million firearms in the United States should be collectively responsible for somewhere in the neighborhood of 720 million deaths. Impressive figure.
    Has anyone ever done a study on just how many stolen firearms are turned in with these less than outstanding buy back programs? I know that most of these publicity stunts operate on a don’t ask-don’t tell system, but has any half-responsible department ever run the numbers? That might make this whole debacle be seen from a different perspective. Sort of like rewarding criminals, or bounty pay for the evil bang sticks. Just an idea, and perhaps some data-jockey reading this can put together some sensible piece that we of the choir can enjoy.

    • “By the good Rev Parker’s estimation, the 90 million firearms in the United States should be collectively responsible for somewhere in the neighborhood of 720 million deaths.”

      Maybe they have and no one noticed.

  4. I had a Jennings I would have taken $50.00 for. Ended up trading it for a small box of 9mm ammo. The only reason I bought it in the first place was that I owed the guy selling it so I took it off his hands for a stupid price.
    I wish the church had instead spent the time and money feeding someone and telling them the Good News. That is something that will save a life.

  5. Or maybe the previous gun buy backs were so successful that therethis was the only gun left on the streets. Or maybe gun buy backs are a waste of money.

  6. Unless your average criminal turns into a crack shot the likes of which the world has only seen in movies and national championship matches then I can’t imagine the criminal activity in the area changing in any way (much less the way they seem to hope) with that gun now in custody.

  7. Local San Diego church is offering $100 grocery card for a handgun
    I will be turning in my Jennings tomorrow and use the card to buy a prime rib for Christmas dinner

  8. I’m starting a grocery card buyback program. Bring me a $100 grocery card and I’ll give you a gun. Okay, it’s a used Hi-Point. In bad condition. But I think that getting rid of those unwanted groceries could save maybe 4 million billion lives children.

  9. I used to work for a judge way back during school, and got to know quite a few cops.

    I was discussing gun buy-backs with the guy responsible for organizing Minneapolis Police Department buy-backs. He used to just hate them. He said they made him feel like a thief.

    For very little money, (similar to the $50 in this story), he’d find himself facing lots of widows looking to get some money for their dead husbands’ guns.A 70-year-old woman on food stamps would show up with four or six or so nice guns – each worth well over $400 even as a walk-in at a pawn shop – and he’d be torn about taking the guns in the buy-back. He didn’t like ripping off old ladies.

    He’d politely suggest how they could make much more money by simply selling the guns, and he’d suggest a few shops.But the old widows usually told him that the guns scared them, that they wanted them gone, that they just wanted their $50, please.

    So, he’d pay the $50 per, take in a beautiful set of Colts and Brownings and H&Ks and S&Ws and Glocks – and drop them off at the shredder. He ruefully said to me “how many people get the double satisfaction, all in one day, of ripping off poor old ladies, and then destroying a bunch of beautiful, well-maintained, high-quality handguns that many would give their eye-teeth to own?”

    But he did share something funny. (Okay, sort of funny. Also sort of enraging.) One of the frequent sights at buy-backs was the recently divorced or divorcing or about-to-be-divorcing women bringing in hubby’s extensive collection of guns, cackling with glee about it, more than happy to let Jerkface’s guns go at 10% of their value.

    When he asked them why they didn’t take the guns to a gun shop and get real money for them, they all had the same answer: Hubby really, really loves his guns, and if she sold them to a gun shop, he could search around and maybe find them and buy them back, and it was Oh so much more fun to be able to tell him – with a lawyer present, I’m assuming – that his precious guns had become shredder-scrap.

    Nasty. Hell hath no fury like . . .

  10. Hi bobby b,
    I think the correct word is “interesting”. I’s not funny, not even “sort of'”. It’s not really enraging either, but it sure is dammed interesting.
    Thanks to you, if my wife ever gets really pissed at me I’ll know to hide my guns immediately.
    Hell, just to be safe, I may do it right now.

  11. Suppose they gave a gun buy back and nobody came?

    They were close to nobody this time. I want to read more stories about buy backs like this. Also, I want to promise that as a pastor, I will never host, endorse, or condone a buy back program for firearms. But I will host a church wide picnic and shoot at our local outdoor range.

  12. So, what’s to stop guys like us from hosting our own buy back and cashing in on these womens’ fears and enmity? Why can’t a guy like myself just hang up a bunch of flyers (say maybe outside of a divorce attorney’s office or an undertaker’s office) saying that I’ll give them $50 and the satisfaction of taking a gun off of the streets in exchange for every gun they turn into me? As long as I don’t take the gun and set it down in the streets, I don’t see how anyone would be able to say that I was being dishonest.

  13. If private sales are legal in your state, you can and should host your own “buy-back”! I would much rather have the guns in the hands of those who have the skill and will to use them, than someone who’s going to piss their gun away for a measley $50.

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