Say Anything Blog

There were 120 guns brought to a gun buy-back event (where the cops buy guns from people and then have them melted down) but only 15 were purchased because the people running the event didn’t have enough money to buy them all, and the people who brought them weren’t willing to give them up for free.

Organizers of a supposed gun buy-back had dozens of people lining up to turn in their weapons, although only 15 were collected today for the Denver Police Department to destroy and melt down.

Held at New Covenant Christian Church in Denver to raise awareness about gun violence, the gun buy-back turned into a gun give-back event when the program could not afford to pay $50 as initially advertised.

The Rev. Reginald Holmes, a pastor at the church, said about 40 people with a total of 120 guns showed up but were turned off to the idea of just donating their guns.

“It’s a tough economy, people want an incentive,” Holmes said.

I wonder how many of the guns were stolen for the express purpose of being sold at this event?

It’s a legitimate question to ask.

$50 is not a lot of money for even the most basic of firearms.  Unless these guns were unworkable junk (in which case, why buy them back?) most were probably worth well over $50 and could have been sold with just a little bit of effort to someone else.  The only guns that would make sense to sell at an event like this would either be, again, junk guns or guns that were stolen.

Given gun control laws, it’s not easy to sell stolen guns.  The government takes it very, very seriously.  So if you want to traffic in stolen guns, what better fence than the cops themselves?  You bring your stolen weapons, and usually (this event aside) they give you cash for them.  No questions asked.

In fact, I wonder how many guns used to commit crimes have turned up at these events to be destroyed.

Regardless, gun buy back programs are based on the premise that we can eliminate crime by eliminating guns.  But as has been demonstrated again and again, the presence of guns does not correlate to greater amounts of crime.  There are other causes for crimes, and if we want to solve the crime problem we’d do well to quit wasting our time trying to be rid of guns.