Is there a gun buyback season? Yes! Coincidentally enough, it coincides with election season. As I pointed out in an earlier post, the whole gun buyback shtick may be losing steam. By now most folks know that exchanging money for busted-ass firearms doesn’t do much of anything in the way of reducing crime. As in nothing. Of course, the pols, police and media continue to cling to their gun buybacks and bibles. OK, not so much the bibles. And not so much the police, either. The boys and gals in blue at the sharp end are under no illusions that gun buybacks are anything more than security theater. Specifically, Portland Oregon Central Precinct Sgt. Tim Sessions [via oregonlive.com] . . .
Portland police officers assisted with paperwork and processing the guns turned in to the foundation. Central Precinct Sgt. Tim Sessions said the police did not have a problem with the buyers on the sidewalk.
“They have a right to buy guns,” Sessions said. “That’s in the Constitution. So that doesn’t bother me a bit.”
Sessions dismissed the possibility that the sidewalk buyers would then sell to “undesirables. That’s not the case. These people know what they’re doing, They know the laws. They know they’d lose that right if they did sell to the undesirables.”
Equally unlikely, said Sessions, who assisted the foundation with its guns buyback for nine years, is the notion that gang members would be among those turning in guns.
“They really would like to see the gangs turn in the guns,” Sessions said. “And I tell them, ‘Keep wishing that.’ But it’s not going to happen.”
Gang members, first of all, want to hold onto their guns because “a gun means power. And two, they see us, the police, and they say ‘We don’t want to be caught with a gun.'”
Now, can we talk about why taxpayer money was wasted on this program, which should have been entirely and exclusively funded by its promotor The Ceasefire Oregon Education Foundation? Just how much did this police-supported boondoggle cost taxpayers, anyway?