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Media on gun buybacks
Newsbusters has a post on how, when the WashPo and the AP ran a story on a DC guy buyback, they for some reason couldn't find a single skeptic or critic to balance the story.
Actually, I rather like gun buybacks. I've got a cheapy gun I got at a yard sale and which has broken down, and I'd be happy to get $50-100 for it, when no buyer in their right mind would offer that. Last time we had one in Tucson, every gunny in town got rid of their old junk. I later got the records of what was turned in, and it was pretty funny. Air guns, gun parts (apparently the folks operating the buyback didn't know guns). A "Mars" brand revolver (those were cheapies made around the 1890s).
Some gun collectors took up station outside the collection points, and if they saw someone with a good firearm, offered them $25 more than the city was paying, and picked up some nice bargains. There were rumors that one local gun dealer cleaned out his stocks of junkers that were being cannibalized for parts and sent his employees rotating among the collection points, turning them in two or three at a time.
[Via the Volokh Conspiracy]
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4 Comments
At the gun shows here in CA, its a felony to buy or sell firearms in the parking lot. Plus how many shiny gold plated mac tens and desert eagles did they "take off the streets"?
While attending the University of Georgia in Athens, I worked for a very large gunshop. The city of Atlanta conducted a buy-back and was paying $50 in cash. My employer drove out there and traded in every Raven .25 auto that we had in stock. (There must have been thirty of them.) Wholesale price for those guns was $27 brand new, and the used ones might have had $15 in them.
Another shop owner was even more creative. He had purchased a bundle of confiscated firearms from the Clayton County Police Department. Half of the guns were broken or missing parts, but he had to buy the whole lot. He took all of the broken and useless guns that he got from the Clayton County PD (paying by the pound) and sold them for $50 each to the city of Atlanta.
The buy-back closed up after the first hour, because they were out of money. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution bragged for days about all the guns that had been "taken off the street."
I'm with Kirk - just an abuse/grab of taxpayer money.
Well, it just seems kind of unsporting to take advantage of the setup like that.
On the serious side, it's your tax dollars, too, paying for the foolishness.