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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Gun "buyback" vs entrepreneurial spirit |
| 2018-12-20 |
| h/t Instapundit [Reason] Over 500 guns were surrendered to Baltimore police within the first hour and a half of a citywide gun buyback program this week. Participants received anywhere from $25 to $500 for their unwanted firearms. Mayor Catherine Pugh and Interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle announced a gun buyback program‐the first in six years‐last week. Pugh said that the program was intended to "get the guns off of our streets." The program reportedly cost the city $250,000, but there is little evidence that buyback programs are effective in reducing violence, or even in reducing the number of firearms in circulation‐as one woman ably demonstrated. Kathleen Cairns, a WBFF Baltimore journalist, tweeted a picture of a woman who was surrendering a 9mm. She hoped to use the money from the program to buy an even bigger gun. There are other ways to game the system as well. For example, the city is offering $25 for every "hi-capacity" magazine turned in. Some digging from Daniel J. Mitchell of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) discovered that such a "hi-capacity" magazine can be purchased online for about $12. The $13 in profit may not seem like much money to some, but it can be the difference between paying for food, rent, a bill, or even a Christmas gift. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #2 These programs are designed by politicos for optics. IMHO, they are not effective. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2018-12-20 18:58 |
| #1 How can it be a buy back if you never owned it in the first place? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2018-12-20 14:20 |