Boston plans to launch a gun buyback program in a bid to reduce shootings following the death last week of a 9-year-old boy who was shot by his 14-year-old brother in an apparent accident, Mayor Marty Walsh said.
Walsh, who took office last month, said he was still developing a specific plan, including how much would be paid and how collection would work, with the city’s newly appointed police commissioner, William Evans.
“It’s a short-term solution,” Walsh told reporters on Saturday. “We need help from the community, we need help from these people to let us know where these guns are, who has these guns, so we can get them off the street.”
Except it doesn’t! Short term or long term, gun “Buy Backs” (quotes because these guns don’t belong to the city in the first place so they are simply BUYING them) don’t work.
Other major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, run periodic buybacks, which aim to reduce the number of guns in circulation and to decrease accidental shootings and theft of guns, which are then used in crimes.
Except it won’t! This is the Broken Windows fallacy at its worst! It doesn’t reduce crime, but it DOES destroy wealth by wasting funds to pay people for junk guns, by destroying serviceable guns that can be sold for vastly more than the scrap they will become, and by wasting time of our officers both by paying them to do this crap, but also by keeping them off the streets where they could actually be stopping crime and bringing criminals to justice.
Pure stupidity!
Don’t forget that this also provides a safe place to fence stolen guns or guns used in a crime.
Remember these “buy backs” are no questions asked. Thus becoming the safest way for a criminal to get rid of a gun. And get paid to boot!