Another Horrible Tragedy

[Dorryn]

Further Update: My response "letter to the editor" to the Buffalo News is going to be published, or so they told me. Sometime in the next 6-13 days. Ill post a link when it shows up.

 

[RPCVYemen]

One grandmother, Brown said, showed up with a loaded gun that had belonged to her late husband.

“She said her grandchildren play at the house and she didn’t know what to do with it. That was a tragedy waiting to happen. She didn’t know what to do,” said Brown, adding that the woman expressed her thanks to the city.

The fact that the political motive for the buybacks is silly and that politicians are idiots doesn't change the fact that these "elderly women" may be making a good decision.

There are at least two good reasons that anyone (particularly an elderly person) might want to to want to get rid of a gun:

1. If you have a gun in house, and you aren't adequately trained, and aren't able/willing to become trained, then it's nothing but a liability. In fact, if you think are adequately trained, but you aren't, it's a liability. So if no one currently living in the house has adequate training, the current resident(s) might not want the gun around. For example, your husband was the gun expert in the house, and he dies.
   
2. There are also cases where for health reasons, you don't want a gun around. During the final stages of my dad's cancer, he was on tremendous doses of morphine. He really didn't want weapons around the house under those circumstances - and that strikes me as a reasonable and responsible decision.

So we've established that there at least two good reasons why a person (particularly an elderly person) might want to dispose of a weapon. So what are they supposed to do with them?

It seems like there are two are three choices here: give it away, or sell it. In my dad's case, he gave some of the weapons to me, and some to my brother. But not everyone has relatives who wants the guns.

If you don't have a relative who wants the guns, then you could sell/give it to a friend or a stranger. If you don't have a friend who wants it, your only choice is to sell it to a stranger.

Many people are uncomfortable selling a weapon to a stranger. That seems eminently reasonable to me. I have never sold a weapon to a stranger. There are two reason for that:

1. Ethics - I really don't ever want to sell a gun to someone who uses that gun in the commission of a crime. Before you hit "Reply" and start telling me about the gun laws - I couldn't care less about the legal responsibility. I understand that this is not an ethical issue for a lot of folks, but it is for me.
   
2. Risk - If I am going to sell a gun, I need to advertise it. I can play games with not giving my address, etc. But essentially, the information that I have the weapon for sale has to make it into the public domain. I'd just as soon not have potentially nefarious strangers knowing that I have a weapon.

So I can imagine that an elderly person has a weapon she/he doesn't want around the house, can't give to a relative, and doesn't want to sell to a complete stranger.

What should she do in that case? A gun buy-back looks like a great solution to me. You go somewhere and get rid of the gun with minimum hassle, and you are reasonably sure that it won't be used in a subsequent crime.

Given that there were a lot of elderly women on line, maybe they are thinking the same way.

Mike

 

[Roccobro]

We need to have a section on THR that is specifically for these "Buyback programs" and their locations. That way we can gear up and make a professional appearance and snatch up the nicer guns for good (fair?) prices from the want-to-be victims. I always read about them AFTER the fact.

Justin

 

[Dravur]

Standing offer

If we ever get one of these gun buybacks here, I will pay $10 fior any peice of junk lorcin, jennings, hi-point or non functioning pile of doo doo you might have. If a guy can turn in 9 junk guns for $960, I would turn around with that coin and buy a nice 1911 or a couple other guns I want.

 

[.cheese.]

I wonder if they take broken guns? I have a broken 10/22 that I'd sell for $50 tp the govt to pay for a couple Glock mags.

 

[RPCVYemen]

That's because cops are better than normal people.
They don't feel that they have to enforce the laws that they are sworn to uphold.
I've NEVER met one that isn't a overbearing, arrogant, egomaniacal badge heavy prick, and i've been working around them for years.

Wow! That's some negativity.

I don't have near as much contact with the police as I did in my youth. But the ones I have had contact with seem to be pretty OK guys doing a really, really hard job. The truth is that the job seems darn near impossible to me.

Mike

 

[Dorryn]

Final Update:

They printed my response article in the paper.

http://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/everybodyscolumn/story/95595.html

 

[DoubleTapDrew]

Very well written. I hope it gets a lot of readers to think twice about the so called "buy backs".

 

[RPCVYemen]

They printed my response article in the paper.

I have to respectfully disagree with the article. If the goal of the gun buy back was to disarm criminals, then it was probably a failure.

However, it did allow people who wanted to dispose of guns safely an opportunity to dispose of guns safely. That was presumably what those elderly women were doing, and I suspect they were very happy to do so. If grandma just wanted the gun safely out of the house, and didn't care about market value, then she would have been very happy with the buy back.

And in fact, disposing of a gun safely may prevent the gun from being stolen by a criminal. The elderly are disproportionately the targets of burglary.

The letter might pointed out:

1. The gun buyback seems to have been very helpful to the elderly who wanted to dispose of weapons, and were not concerned about the market value of those weapons.
2. Thus it may have indirectly prevented criminals from acquiring a handgun in a very small number of cases.
3. But it did not directly disarm any criminals, which was the announced goal of the buy back.

Then it might have been convincing to non-gun owners. As it stands, I think it probably won't convince anyone of the futility of buybacks. There's a problem when we swing too wide a brush.

Just my 2 cents,

Mike

 

[Dorryn]

Market value or no, the money could have been spent better educating them, not disarming them. Senior citizens, as I wrote in the article, have as much if not more need for firearms than young, healthy males. Youre making the same argument in reverse for not advertising you HAVE weapons: someone might take them. Thats the reason theyre targeted: Criminals EXPECT them to be harmless. Might as well give them what they expect, right?

Since senior citizens, at least here in Buffalo, are specifically targeted for thefts (and several murders recently) id say its still better to own a weapon than not. 100% chance at being defenseless, or a lower percentage? Even if you dont know anything about firearms, you still know which end the bullet comes out of. A major point I tried to make was that if they KNEW the gun was not illegal, it could have been of great value to a person who simply could not bear to own the weapon any more. In a depressed economic zone like this one, several hundred dollars would have made a helpful supplement to social security income.

And again, we pay police in order that we be defended. I neither support police officers making a profit from ignorance, or having first pick at firearms bought for a pittance, or firearms being destroyed.

 

[runfrumu]

Wow. The residents can sleep safer he says. Because we all know everyone who turned in guns was a criminal.

Those stupid "no questions asked" programs do zero good. No active criminal who would use his weapon to commit a crime is going to go turn it in.

It's just a way to trick people who have gun's who know nothing about them, who inherited them in some shape or form to give them up.

 

[pbonebright]

I would be OK with the gun buyback for some of the reasons stated (granny doesn't know how to handle it etc), but my biggest concern would be the percentage of guns going right out the back door into the black market as others have said. Get the guns from granny then sell them to the thugs. I think they should take part of the money and have a third party auditor witness and certify the destruction of the guns if they want to do this. Hey, I think Hans Blix is available Either that or have a public auction for licensed dealers.
PB

 

[matt87]

have a public auction for licensed dealers

Great idea, but if I were purchasing at one of them auctions I'd want some sort of proof they'd done a background check on that serial number (assuming presence of same). I can just imagine that to be some sort of nasty sting operation... even if it's not official.

 

[RPCVYemen]

Get the guns from granny then sell them to the thugs.

Do you have some reliable stats on how often this happens in a gun buyback?

Mike