Today I was listening to the excellent Gun Rights Advocate’s Podcast. The episode dealt with gun buy back programs and it raised some excellent points.
For those who don’t know gun buy back programs are when organizations try to “get guns off the street” by offering money for turned in firearms. Normally these are no questions asked events so any gun you drop off is fine. The amount given is usually well under the value of anything beyond a Hi-Point though.
These programs are idiotic for so many reasons. The first reason is quite simple, it’s a felony to do these. At least it would be if any one of us did it. The reason it’s a felony is because these are done without federal firearms license. In order to buy and sell a quantity of guns you need to be a dealer. What qualifies a dealer is a federal firearms license which the BATFE (formally just the ATF I don’t know when the Hell they added Explosives to the title) dole out. If you deal in firearms without one of these license (with the exception of private sales which are restricted to a specific quantity) you are committing a felony.
That’s right every time a church or school decided to use money to “get guns off the street” they are committing a felony. But they never get charged with it. I wonder why that is. I know if I went a did the EXACT same thing I’d have the BATFE blasting down my door and probably curb stomping my ass. This is a perfect example of a specific group of people being above the law.
Now the next thing you might say is what about when police departments do it? Well it’s still a felony according to the law. But more importantly then it’s YOUR tax money being used to buy the guns. Police departments are tax funded and when they do these gun buy backs they use department money (i.e. your tax money) to buy the guns. Doesn’t it make you feel good knowing your tax money is being used to rip people off?
And it is a rip off. The highest dollar value I’ve ever heard a gun buy back program off is $200.00. The only guns you can get for that price are relics or Hi-Points. I know most gang bangers won’t be using relics. And that brings up the next point, the gangsters aren’t the ones turning in the guns. The idea of these events is the “get guns off the street” in the hopes it will reduce crime. Of course this only works if the criminals turn in their guns, which they most certainly won’t. So instead of the guns being sold to a dealer for fair market value they are practically given away. And the people giving them away are usually the law abiding citizens.
So we pretty much have a series of events that require committing a felony level crime in the hopes of reducing crime. But they don’t reduce crime since the criminals aren’t the ones turning in their guns.
Anyways I encourage everybody to listen to the most recent episode of the Gun Rights Advocate’s Podcast. And the next time you see a gun buy back program going on remember a felony is being committed and if it’s the police doing it it’s your tax money being wasted.