A lot of football fans are giving the city of New Orleans after the New Orleans Saints’ NFC Championship Game loss. A controversial no-call seemingly gave the game to the Los Angeles Rams, and a lot of people are hating that in the Big Easy.

But New Orleans has other problems far bigger than a football game. It’s a violent city with a sky-high violent crime rate.

With Democrats in firm control, it’s unsurprising they blame guns for the problems in New Orleans. Like a lot of Democratic enclaves, they decided to host a gun buyback program to try and get guns off the street.

It didn’t go well.

LaToya Cantrell‘s gun buyback turned out to be a bust. Previously unmentioned, this painfully liberal effort only had $100,000 total, so only money for 200 people. Small, important details such as this had not been shared.

The Hayride jumped on the fact Cantrell originally said $500 per gun. Then it was modified to $500 max per resident no matter if they turned in one or five guns. As to how it worked, they gave vouchers for guns. The buyback was advertised as cash although one person said he received a $500 card for Dollar General. It’s still unclear if anyone received actual cash.

First, a $500 gift card to Dollar General? Seriously? That’s like giving away a car, only for it to be Yugo.

Second, $500 per gun is hilarious.

You see, gun buybacks have to walk this odd line between offering enough to entice people to turn in their guns and not so much that they will go and get guns to turn in. A $500 buyback would encourage me to go pick up a Hi-Point or other inexpensive pistol and then take that money to drop on something else.

And that’s the problem.

About the only way to avoid that is to offer market value for each weapon. Unfortunately for buyback proponents, that’s not something they’re really in any place to try and do. They don’t know market value, for one thing. For another, market value may not be enough to get people to turn in their weapons.

Of course, the Cantrell camp figured out the problem with their plan and adjusted, offering just $500 total, regardless of how many guns people turned in.

Which, most likely, resulted in fewer guns being turned in. After all, if you’re going to give me $500 regardless, you’re going to get the one I’m least attached to, and I’ll keep the rest.

Frankly, from what I can see, this is a trainwreck even by buyback standards. Most buybacks are at least organized. They may pay for stupid things they count as guns, but at least they’re organized enough to have their stuff together before the beginning of the event.

Cantrell managed to botch even that part.

Yet these people want to be taken seriously when they talk about the problems plaguing the city? They want to pretend it’s the number of guns on the street that’s the problem? Why should you listen to any of them? They can’t even pull off a buyback. The process is simple. They give you guns; you give them money. There have been enough completed that someone should have been able to use Google to see what to do.

If they didn’t get that right, only a fool would believe they’re right on much of anything else.