We’ve covered buybacks here at Bearing Arms quite a bit. We understand that they don’t work. In Utica, NY, a private citizen managed to illustrate this point beautifully. I mean, he sold enough at a buyback to account for a part-time job’s annual income.
Not too shabby for a few dollars and a 3D printer.
However, now NY AG Letitia James is changing the rules on buybacks in the state.
New York’s attorney general has changed the rules of a state gun buyback program after a participant exploited the system by using a 3D printer to make firearm parts in bulk that he then turned in for $21,000 in gift cards.
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James’ office said it responded to the exploited loophole by giving buyback personnel more discretion to determine the value of weapons being handed in, and setting a standard that all 3D-printed guns accepted by the program must be capable of being fired more than once.
The new rules were in place by Sept. 17, when the attorney general’s office hosted a gun buyback in the Syracuse suburb of Camillus.
“It’s shameful that this individual exploited a program that has successfully taken thousands of guns off the streets to protect our communities from gun violence,” James’ office said in a statement.
Except there’s absolutely no evidence anywhere that buybacks actually protect anything.
Oh, they might protect politicians’ jobs since they make it look like they’re doing something about violent crime, but that’s about it.
What the gentleman in Utica did was expose some of the stupid of buybacks. We’ve seen it happen over and over again, where people who know nothing about guns give money to people who turn in…something. We’ve seen rocket launcher trainers turned in, for crying out loud.
James is changing the rules because she’s failing to understand the lesson the individual, who uses the name Kem, gave her and the rest of the state.
The guns turned in at buybacks are typically useless for crime. They’re old rifles and single-shot shotguns that are often older than those who turn them in. They’re revolvers that look like a prop from The Untouchables.
These are rarely cutting-edge firearms.
They’re relics.
When they’re not, though, they’re often guns used in actual crimes that the individual wants to get rid of. Since these are “no questions asked,” they can drop the gun and walk away without a care in the world.
Yet those are a minuscule part of what gets turned in.
Study after study has shown that buybacks don’t work. Yet James is still trying to convince people that they do and is now trying to salvage the program after Kem exposed it for being as stupid as we’ve said it was.
Now, James has changed the rules so Kem can’t do that.
However, let’s remember that a lot of firearms that can be used to deadly effect only need a single shot to be fired. If James actually believes guns are a threat to public safety, how can she justify drawing such an arbitrary line? Do people’s lives not matter if they’re threatened with a single-shot “ghost gun” as opposed to some other firearm?
That’s basically what she’s saying here.
It would be far easier for James to step up and acknowledge that buybacks are a failure and maybe explore methods for law-abiding citizens to get rid of guns when they don’t want them to remain in circulation. I’m not in favor of something like that, but they’re not my guns.
Yet James can’t admit defeat. She can’t admit that buybacks are an anti-gun shibboleth that she cannot speak out against. So, she changes the rules so they can’t be exposed quite the same way again.
