A lot of people don’t like the term “gun buyback” because it’s impossible to buy something back you didn’t own in the first place. It’s a fair point, and I want to acknowledge it from the start because I also happen to agree.

Yet the purpose of language is to communicate ideas and since everyone knows what I mean if I say “buyback,” I’m going to use it just the same.

Even if the term and the activity both are idiotic.

Why do I bring this up? Because the media is reporting a massive success with a buyback in Santa Cruz County that got a little more than 100 guns!

The Santa Cruz County Chief’s Association held a gun buyback event Saturday.

…

The Sheriff’s Office said they collected 77 rifles and shotguns, 63 handguns and one assault weapon.

Of course, we don’t know just how many of the guns actually worked or where any of them came from.

It should be noted that Santa Cruz County has more than 267,000 people. A total of 141 guns just doesn’t seem like all that much when you consider the population total for the county.

Sure, it’s a county in California, so there might not be the same number as you’d find in Texas, but it’s still just a drop in the bucket at best.

What’s funny to me is how buybacks are popular with anti-gunners. These are the same people who claim studies support gun control–they don’t, but let’s pretend they did–yet repeatedly dismiss studies that show buybacks don’t work.

They continue to waste money on a failed experiment and never seem to realize that cash could well go to fund programs that might actually make a difference.

A lot of criminals become criminals because they don’t think they have any options. They figure they don’t have a choice but to take to the streets and take up illegal activities as a way to make money. They sell drugs, rob people, break into houses, and all of this stuff because, in many cases, they don’t think there’s anything else they could do.

Rather than wasting money on buybacks, what if that money went toward efforts to show people there are better ways, ways that they can earn a good living and not risk ending up dead or in prison from doing something illegal?

Instead, we get crap like this.

This is the bread and circuses of gun control. This is the distraction, the way to look like they’re doing something without actually doing anything. Localities hold these events so local officials can look like they’re taking the problems seriously and are actively engaged in addressing them.

These same local officials will cite studies whenever convenient to push an anti-gun agenda, yet pretend that the studies showing buybacks don’t work simply don’t exist.

And let’s be real here, academia isn’t exactly a hotbed of pro-gun sentiment. We know why so many anti-gun studies are garbage, after all, and it’s not because of the NRA or any other gun rights group. So if academia, which has an anti-gun bias, says gun buybacks don’t work, it’s probably a good idea to take it at face value.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. They’d rather spend the money and look like they’re doing something than, you know, actually do something.