“Are we really expecting these people to walk down the street to this dropbox, with the gun tucked in their shorts, and drop it off? It doesn’t seem to me to be a thought-out process as (of) right now.” – Tacoma police union president Sgt. Jim Barrett in Worth a Shot? Tacoma mulls gun ‘drop boxes’ [at foxnews.com]
I see the city replacing a lot of drop boxes….
^ This!
Agreed, and TTAG will be there to cover it when it happens.
How often do you suppose that box will be broken into?
So what happens the first time somebody mistakes this for a UPS drop box?
No breaking in necessary.
Just wait by the drop-box, bop a would-be gun dropper on the head with something heavy, and take the gun they were about to get rid of. Repeat until your whole posse is tooled up.
And you can get some wallets, watches and cellphones as value added.
Incurable optimism. You’d be waiting a very long time.
actually, you could put one in outside your house. and clean it out every day. 🙂
Sounds like something stupid Shannon would think up
Print up a yard sign that says:”FREE gun disposal” ?
I would put that under an MDA banner of course
If that is what the box is gonna look like, then most will have the hinge pin driven out and emptied. Also easy enough to put up a fake box if a criminal wants a steady source of free guns to sell.
…which assumes people would even use the boxes. Amiright?
May end up full of hobo turds and dirty needles.
Or as a place to drop those little plastic doggie doo bags. Nature abhors a vacuum!
Question is where they put the boxes. If you put one on police department property, I doubt people will want to incriminate themselves or Det. Dick will hide behind bushes. If you put it on city property, it’ll get “refunded” quick.
Now if you put it on a gun club’s property, it should be raffled off and the proceeds should go to the NRA-ILA or the local equivalent.
‘Anyone in the port city who wants to get rid of a gun discreetly, Taborrok said, has an easy option: toss it in Puget Sound.’
As usual, we enlist the least intelligent people in the community to be our leaders.
This made me recall that the UK has knife drop boxes. I wonder if anybody actually drops knives into them. Like… I mean… how does that even help? Kitchens are full of them. And then there was that push in the UK to ban kitchen knives (of a certain length.) Like really? Prisons can’t even keep people from making their own shanks. What the hell would that do?
But back to gunboxes, besides it being illegal to conceal carry a firearm (presumably it’s unpermited people walking up to the dropbox), doesnt that make an easy place to steal a gun from?
My guess as whenever the authorized people go to empty these things, someone’s gonna accidentally blow a hole in hand, foot, or passer by.
I can also imagine some poor do good type without gun experience picking up a loaded gun and having an ND on the way to the safe or when DROPPING it into the safe.
I-594 has no exclusion for drop boxes. The box could end up in the can, if it fails to get a background check.
This could be handy for some portion of society, if they would simply equip it with a cloth adequate for wiping fingerprints.
I’m going to put up a similar box for ammo turn-ins. 😀
Don’t get too excited, I’m sure no one would be stupid enough to dispose of .22LR.
How did you know I was hoping to score .22??? 😉
Sounds like an easy way for a wife or live-in girlfriend to get some nasty payback. Simply drop your man’s irreplaceable Colt Python in one of these idiot boxes and call it a day.
Why am I seeing a business opportunity.
Recycling empty boxes?
finally, a place to dispose of what you pick up with a pooper scooper
Oh, YES! We have a winner!
That’s actually a message that the nitwits who proposed this nonsense will understand.
Dog turds, cat turds, cat urine clumps, fish guts…you name it.
Another brilliant, under thought through, feel good waste of tax payers’ money. Okay city council, let’s talk this through:
Situation 1. Someone finds a gun lying around in public. They are not going to pick it up and drop in in the box. You probably want them to leave it alone and call the PD, because there’s probably a reason it’s been left lying around.
Situation 2. Someone has a gun they need to rid themselves of it because it may link them to a specific crime. I doubt they are going to go drop in a box somewhere in public view. That baby is going in a dumpster, bottom of the river, sound, lake…whatever. Its going to disappear.
Situation 3:Someone has an illegal firearm, is not eligible to possess firearms, or has one that has been used in criminal activity. If…and a big if here, they were worried about it, they’d disappear it (see above) or sell/trade/give it to anther member of their social/business circle.
Situation 4: Someone finds a gun belonging to a relative or whatever…no known criminal history, just doesn’t want it. They are either going to sell it or give it to a friend/relative/etc. They may call a gun store to see if they would buy it or sell it by consignment, or as a last resort, call the PD to see if they will come get it. I really doubt they will go chuck it in a box, largely because I know I’d feel a little concerned about leaving a firearm in an uncontrolled or protected environment and there is nothing to show I transferred ownership of it to the city.
Just for arguments sake, a box was broken into or stolen and after I placed a firearm in it. If it were to end up at a crime scene and could be linked to me…the burden is now on me to prove I had used one of the boxes to dispose of it. And by admitting that I did so, would that make me vulnerable to civil liability for “abandoning” a firearm? Because the feel good city government will not absolve me of that responsibility, or bear it themselves, I guarantee. Conversely, it now gives the criminal a defense…”naw man, not my gun. I found it and dropped in the box, that’s why my prints and DNA are on it.”
This just has bad idea all over it…
Situation 5
Criminal arrested with illegal firearm claims immunity because “I was looking for a dropbox officer.”
Unfortunately number 4 does happen way to often. That’s were the good firearms that show up during gun buybacks usually come from, so dumb people will probably do the same with these drop boxes as well.
Tacoma is in a race to out-stupid Seattle.
It’s neck-and-neck…..
Of course they couldn’t use a starting gun……
Do a drive-by,drop it in…but you don’t even get a $50 Target card.
20 seconds with a Halligan tool and this box is toast. Which is approximately what will happen soon enough.
Don’t know what a halligan tool is, but It wouldn’t take more than 5 seconds to pop the lock off with a small sledge hammer and a cold chisel!
A Halligan tool is a combination tool that firefighters use to break through doors, walls, rip open cars, etc. One end is a forked crowbar, the other is a pick and angled prybar at a 90 degree angle, and striking heads on the back of both.
https://www.lncurtis.com/onlineshop-tools-entry_tools-nupla-nupla_halligan_tool_-_fire
They’re very handy tools when you don’t care about being crafty or subtle. Usually made from heat-treated 4140 steel.
That barrel type lock can be broken into by a novice with a simple tool and 20 seconds of time.
Stupid idea, stupid implementation.
My new gun safe. It will blend beautifully with my decor.
You mean all your furniture has a lot of small hole in it, and all the locks are shot off or knocked off?
Tacoma PD chief pet project. Ridiculed by academics and TPD union – http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/09/09/worth-shot-tacoma-mulls-gun-drop-boxes/
If there isn’t someone in the general counsels office making that teeth sucking sound that accompanies bad ideas like this, there should be. Aside from being a stupid, stupid idea, it’s a liability issue, for both the city and potentially the well meaning, but ill informed citizen who may use it.
1.) You stroll on up to the box…
2.) You drop yo glock in that box…
3.) We come and open the box, and that’s the way we do BANG AAAAAAHHH I JUST F $@#KING SHOT MYSELF!!!!
They’ll probably just have the meter maid check it on their rounds. Throw anything there in a big mail sack and off we go in the Cushman…
So I found this old dynamite cleaning out my grandfather’s shed…no problem, the city just put up these cool drop boxes.
BTW is it supposed to sweat like that?
They should just go ahead just put stickers on it with the collection times like a mail box or Fedex drop boxes. That way the theives know when to jimmy it open.
I could see some liberal teacher telling their students that if they find their parents guns to drop them in said box.
Just have the kids call the SWAT team on their parents.
I would imagine that in reality the cops will find all sorts of other interesting things in the box besides guns, and deservedly so.
So they say: “It’s worth a shot” Fine, let somebody open up on it with 50 shots from an AK, or AR-15!
All this money spent on a War on Drugs and all we had to do was put up disposal boxes?
Who knew?