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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Why Gun Buy Backs Don’t Work

Economist Alex Tabarok explains why gun buy back programs are bad policy.

Gun buybacks attract low-quality guns from people who aren’t likely to use them to commit crimes. The Oakland police, for example, bought a dozen guns from seniors living in an assisted-living facility. Are you relieved to know that Don Perata has disarmed these dangerous senior citizens?

The Oakland buyback was especially absurd because of the high price offered: $250.

Did no one running the program think to look at the price of a new gun? In act, the first two people in line at one of the three buyback locations were gun dealers with 60 firearms packed in the trunk of their car.

One wonders why the police even bothered to buy the guns from Oakland residents. Why not buy directly from gun manufacturers?

Of course, buying guns from gun manufacturers is so obviously an absurd way to reduce the supply of guns that it has never been proposed. . . .

There are 150 to 200 million guns in the United States, so there are plenty of low-quality guns to be sold. An Oakland gun buyback is like trying to drain the Pacific — every bucket of water you take out is instantly replaced. Even large gun-buyback programs are unlikely to have significant effects. Australia spent half a billion dollars buying guns, with no significant effect on homicides by firearm.

Imagine that instead of guns, the Oakland police decided, for whatever strange reason, to buy back sneakers. The idea of a gun buyback is to reduce the supply of guns in Oakland. Do you think that a sneaker buyback program would reduce the number of people wearing sneakers in Oakland? Of course not.

All that would happen is that people would reach into the back of their closet and sell the police a bunch of old, tired, stinky sneakers.

Of course, the idea that disarming the public is going to have any impact on gun crime is a bit ridiculous.  Guns do not motivate crime.  Crime is motivated by other reasons, be it sloth or poverty or even just plain greed.  Regardless, banishing guns isn’t going to reduce crime both because guns are just sometimes a tool used for crime and because the only people who really follow laws banishing guns are people who don’t commit crimes in the first place.

Comments

What a grat business idea. Buy Davis .25 saturday night specials for $90, and sell them to gun buy back programs for $250. What could go wrong?

Wing Chun Geologist on February 26, 2008 at 04:12 pm

Gun buyback - Another calamitous liberal program based on emotion and totally lacking in logic and reasoning.  Perhaps as psychiatrist Lyle H. Rossiter has noted in his recent book, liberals are clinically insane.


The Supreme Court is a bunch of black robed tyrants

docdave on February 26, 2008 at 04:24 pm

Sounds like a good deal to me.  When they gonna’ buy my old guns that won’t shoot, anymore.  Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, oops.


“We need not worry so much about what man descends from - it’s what he descends to that shames the human race.”

twoplanker on February 26, 2008 at 04:42 pm
Avatar for imagine

Gun buy backs are stupid, for all the reasons mentioned.

Guns do motivate crime because they work.  The gun is the vehicle (or rather one of the vehicles) that allow it to occur.

My brother in law ran a small corner deli in Brooklyn for about ten years.  he was robbed 7 times in the first five years of business.  When the robbery was attempted with a knife, he pulled out his bat and the robbery was foiled.  When the robbery was done with a gun, he handed over the cash.

The sheer number of guns in circulation make any buy back program completely insane.

imagine on February 26, 2008 at 06:08 pm

My brother in law ran a small corner deli in Brooklyn for about ten years.  he was robbed 7 times in the first five years of business.

That’s a shame.

Liberal area, guns are already restricted, and gun crime is rampant.

I wonder what the problem is.

likwidshoe on February 26, 2008 at 06:16 pm

Entitlement mentality motivates crime.


If you don’t know by now, don’t mess with it.

robert108 on February 26, 2008 at 06:29 pm

I took advantage of a gun buy back program in Sacramento once. I had a cheap ass .22 short revolver with the plating peeling off and cheap (warped) plastic grips that I’d gotten as part of a trade for some other guns. It might have made a good starter pistol, but that’s it! I traded it (none of my GOOD guns) to the City of Sacramento for slightly more than it was worth.

If enough people sell junk guns to the gun grabbers, you’d think they’d learn their lesson. Unfortunately, the only thing they know is, that whatever they do, it doesn’t reduce crime, so they obviously need to do MORE!



A troll is someone who only wants to stir up trouble, not have an honest debate.  Some signs that a poster is a troll:
* Dodges questions from other posters * Refuses to give sources
* When one of its arguments is shown to be false, either ignores the proof or moves the goalposts.  Heh. (From the LGF faq)

Proof on February 26, 2008 at 06:42 pm

Just think Rob we can have all that sillyness of the Clinton years all over again. Only good thing to come out of Clinton’s administration was a GOP majority in the house and senate. smile


Check out:
Goon’s North Dakota Red Neck
Goon’s World

goon on February 26, 2008 at 07:50 pm

And the only thing to come from a gop house and senate has been a dem house and dem senate.

And who knows… maybe a dem president.


“If a conservative is still a republican after the last 13 years, he is blind to the fact that his party of choice has failed him utterly.” – Realitybasedbob

realitybasedbob on February 26, 2008 at 07:56 pm
Avatar for imagine

yeah, the right had it all for 6 years and look where they got us....

The right has failed miserably.  The majority of the populace knows it.  The majority of the Republican party knows it.  They had top to bottom control and squandered it foolishly.  The right lost the Senate, they are about to loose the White House and quite possibly the House shortly thereafter.

The right harkens back to the Reagan years, as that was the last time the party was unified..

The sad part is that if the Dems have total control, they will “F” it up also...I am believing more and more in the need for a balance of power…

We need to make our political leaders work together.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

The far right and the far left contain the same number of morons.

imagine on February 26, 2008 at 09:00 pm

The right has failed miserably.

Detroit.

There’s one of your testbeds.

You are very intimate with failure.

We need to make our political leaders work together.

Government doesn’t “work together”.

You still have a lot to learn.

likwidshoe on February 26, 2008 at 09:14 pm

The only bad thing the Republicans have done is to spend like Dems.  With Dems in charge, it can only get worse.


If you don’t know by now, don’t mess with it.

robert108 on February 26, 2008 at 09:19 pm

In the words of Thomas Jefferson:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”


The Supreme Court is a bunch of black robed tyrants

docdave on February 26, 2008 at 09:20 pm

We need to make our political leaders work together.

Notice the need for coercion.  Leftie fascists just can’t stand “free people making free choices”; they have to mandate, compel and command.  That’s why they are so power-hungry.


If you don’t know by now, don’t mess with it.

robert108 on February 26, 2008 at 09:20 pm
Avatar for Lestat

I like Chris Rock’s idea of bullet control.

Because with $5,000 bullets, there are no innocent bystanders.

Lestat on February 26, 2008 at 09:27 pm

”That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

November 4, 2008


“If a conservative is still a republican after the last 13 years, he is blind to the fact that his party of choice has failed him utterly.” – Realitybasedbob

realitybasedbob on February 26, 2008 at 09:30 pm

More Thomas Jefferson:

“Christianity ... (has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ... Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers ...”
Six Historic Americans, by John E. Remsberg

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot...”
Thomas Jefferson letter to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119

“Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”
Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, re Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom


“If a conservative is still a republican after the last 13 years, he is blind to the fact that his party of choice has failed him utterly.” – Realitybasedbob

realitybasedbob on February 26, 2008 at 09:34 pm
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