I missed the notifications of this event at the People’s Missionary Baptist Church in Toledo Saturday. It seems that those notifications are coming closer and closer to the event date, almost as if those conducting the turn-ins don’t want anyone to do any pre-planning. Toledo has a checkered history of police bullying private buyers and sellers. Buckeyefirearms.org did a great job of exposing this last year, with four videos: Video 1, Video 2, Video 3, and Video 4. Not that it mattered, as there were plenty of private buyers on hand this year . . .
This year, the police seem to have learned more about the law. Maybe that’s due to the bad publicity in earlier years. Here’s what the Toledo Blade reported:
In addition to attracting people willing to trade in their guns for cash, the buyback drew private gun buyers and collectors who were willing to pay people cash.
Larry Lorms of Columbus was willing to offer more than $50, possibly $300 to $400, depending on the model, age, and condition.
They even reported that the police had no problems with the private buyers:
Sergeant Madison said she was aware of the buyers outside the church.
“That is their right to be there. We are not concerned about them,” she said. “Our mission is to provide a service to our community. We are not trying to pressure people to get rid of guns they want to keep.”
I haven’t seen a report of how many private sales were conducted. Last year the turn-in event brought in at least two nice S&W revolvers and the police took in 178 firearms and 90 pounds of ammunition.
No totals for this year’s turn-in have been reported by the police yet.
©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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