We cover a fair number of buybacks here, mostly to criticize them for being a complete and total failure. We often get a kick out of the stupid things officials hand money over for, things like training rocket launcher tubes that never fired actual rockets. Another buyback gave money for a piece of pipe mounted to a 2×4, for crying out loud.

It’s hilarious.

However, what’s not funny is that taxpayer dollars go to fund these things all too often. Now, a North Dakota bill wants to change that within its borders.

North Dakota legislators are considering a ban on public firearm buyback programs, which local governments and law enforcement agencies even in some gun-friendly conservative states commonly use to voluntarily remove weapons from the street.

Republican state Rep. Luke Simons, the primary sponsor of the bill, told a House committee Thursday that firearm buybacks do nothing to increase public safety and shouldn’t be subsidized by taxpayer money. His proposed ban wouldn’t apply to programs sponsored by private entities.

“The state should not be in the business of buying back guns. Ever,” Simons, a Dickinson Republican, told the Political Subdivisions Committee, of which he is a member.

Simons isn’t wrong. At all.

However, a Democrat apparently doesn’t seem to comprehend what’s being proposed.

Rep. Mary Adams, a Grand Forks Democrat, questioned the need for such a ban.

“I don’t know how it hurts anybody’s Second Amendment rights if they willingly turn in their guns,” Adams said.

Look, I get that this is difficult for some people, but a ban on the government doing something is not a ban on something being done at all. If private entities want to fund a buyback, that’s not prohibited. They’re free to do it.

What the proposed ban would do is mean taxpayer money can’t be used on this nonsense.

Then again, there are a lot of people on the Left who seem to think that the government is the only entity that can and should do any number of things, so maybe Adams is one of those.

Further, Adams is also not aware that gun buybacks are great places to ditch weapons used in various crimes. Thanks to “no questions asked” policies, guns can be dumped and even if law enforcement realizes they have a murder weapon in and amongst the crap, there’s nothing they can do with it. By then, there are so many fingerprints on it that it’s useless as evidence, thus allowing criminals to walk.

And that’s if they even realize they have the gun. If not, well…

Frankly, I think Simons’ bill needs to be passed in every state in the union. Similar laws already exist in Kansas and Indiana, but that still leaves a lot of states where taxpayer money may end up being used for this kind of stupidity. With luck, more legislatures will take up this issue and pass their own bans on public money being wasted in such a way.