The City of San Francisco is one of the most notoriously anti-gun communities in one of the most anti-gun states in the nation. It’s not a place you’re going to be comfortable in if you’re a gun person. Nor will you enjoy it if you dislike human fecal matter on the sidewalks, but hey, what can you do?

San Francisco, like so many other anti-gun cities, recently had a gun buyback.

More than 225 guns were returned Saturday during an annual gun buyback program in San Francisco.

The event was organized by the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of

Violence Prevention Services, the San Francisco Police Department and the United Playaz, a San Francisco-based violence prevention and youth development organization.

United Playaz founder Rudy Corpuz said people turned in 228 guns, including 8 assault rifles during the four-hour event Saturday.

Those who brought in handguns got $100 and those who turned in “assault weapons” got $100. I’m sure people feel so much safer now.

San Francisco has a population of over 883,000 people, and they only got 228 firearms? Seriously? This is supposed to count as some kind of a big win?

Well, it’s not.

See, those guns–including the eight “assault weapons” turned in–came from lawful gun owners who simply didn’t want their firearms anymore and didn’t know how to sell them otherwise. That’s about it.

After all, if people knew they could take them to a gun store and have them sold on consignment and thus make a lot more, I suspect people would be all over it. They didn’t, though, and thanks to California’s laws, they couldn’t sell them directly to individuals who they knew to be responsible gun owners, they may not have known there were any other choices.

But the number of guns is pathetically small when you think of the size of the city of San Francisco.

How many people will actually delude themselves to believe that the buyback made their community safer? How many actually think that those guns made any bit of a difference?

Far too many.

Look, I don’t begrudge people getting rid of guns they don’t want. What I begrudge are communities doing this kind of thing in order to look like they’re making some kind of an effort to combat violent crime without having to actually address violent crime. That’s all this is. It’s theater, a dramatic presentation to make people feel better about their city and the elected officials who need them for reelection.

At no point will this benefit anyone else, so let’s not pretend it’s some unmitigated good. They didn’t take guns off the street, they took them from people who represented absolutely no threat whatsoever. The criminals, however, aren’t going to give their guns up nearly so easily, especially for such paltry sums.

No, they’ll keep their guns and make as much money from a single holdup as they would turning their guns in.

Please, as a society, can we stop kidding ourselves about what we’re doing with these buybacks? You know, just to shake things up.