Drizzt
Member
Beyond gun buybacks
June 2, 2006
IN THE world of hip-hop music, there are two cardinal rules: Rap about what you know, and don't rap about what you don't. By that code, local rappers Four Peace this week showed they know far more than they wish they did about the flying bullets and snatched lives that arestarting to define their city. At a press conference with Mayor Thomas Menino, they rhymed about remixed eulogies and only sons dying ``wet." As in bloody.
When it came time for city leaders to take the microphone, their solution was less than reassuring: a gun buyback program by which, in theory, people will be handing over guns responsible for the wave of shootings.
In this case, theory is not likely to become reality. Nearly every study done on buyback campaigns shows that they are an ineffective way to take the guns police are after off the streets. The commissioner who presided over Boston's legendary drop in crime, Paul F. Evans, said years ago that, dollar for dollar, cop for cop, buybacks aren't the way to go. In Boston's 1993 buyback, almost 75 percent of the guns turned in were pre-1968 firearms, a Harvard study found.
Buybacks have a made-for-TV appeal that's hard to resist: One gun, one life. A decade ago, they took off with an almost game-show popularity: Guns for food, guns for therapy, and in one Illinois town, buns for guns, where the prize was a free table dance at a strip club. Now buybacks are making a comeback, not just in Boston but in a few other cities as well.
Taking any gun off the street is a worthwhile goal. And buybacks can serve an important function to galvanize neighborhoods, giving ordinary people a chance to own the problem and build trust with police. But with limited resources and a balance of power that seems dangerously tilted toward the bad guys, it's clear that the money and man-hours involved could be put to better use in other, more proven strategies.
City leaders say parents, suspecting there are guns in the home, want help. Here's a suggestion: a St. Louis initiative from the mid-1990s, Consent-to-Search. In it, police and residents hatched a plan where parents in high-crime areas of the city gave police permission to search their homes and confiscate guns, in exchange for a promise that no gun prosecution would follow. In its first year, police seized 402 guns from juveniles; one out of every two searches yielded a firearm.
The effort attracted national attention, including from Justice Department officials, as a model to analyze and test in other cities. Ironically, like Boston's most effective crime intervention programs of the 1990s, Consent-to-Search withered after a turnover of police and community leadership.
It's a tough bargain, trading guns for offenders. Not the stuff of a TV slogan. But it would get people involved in the process of getting weapons off the street. And it would send an undeniable message to a target audience: A gun in the hand of a kid tears at the fabric of this city so deeply, we're willing to trade an arrest to get it.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...ials/articles/2006/06/02/beyond_gun_buybacks/
June 2, 2006
IN THE world of hip-hop music, there are two cardinal rules: Rap about what you know, and don't rap about what you don't. By that code, local rappers Four Peace this week showed they know far more than they wish they did about the flying bullets and snatched lives that arestarting to define their city. At a press conference with Mayor Thomas Menino, they rhymed about remixed eulogies and only sons dying ``wet." As in bloody.
When it came time for city leaders to take the microphone, their solution was less than reassuring: a gun buyback program by which, in theory, people will be handing over guns responsible for the wave of shootings.
In this case, theory is not likely to become reality. Nearly every study done on buyback campaigns shows that they are an ineffective way to take the guns police are after off the streets. The commissioner who presided over Boston's legendary drop in crime, Paul F. Evans, said years ago that, dollar for dollar, cop for cop, buybacks aren't the way to go. In Boston's 1993 buyback, almost 75 percent of the guns turned in were pre-1968 firearms, a Harvard study found.
Buybacks have a made-for-TV appeal that's hard to resist: One gun, one life. A decade ago, they took off with an almost game-show popularity: Guns for food, guns for therapy, and in one Illinois town, buns for guns, where the prize was a free table dance at a strip club. Now buybacks are making a comeback, not just in Boston but in a few other cities as well.
Taking any gun off the street is a worthwhile goal. And buybacks can serve an important function to galvanize neighborhoods, giving ordinary people a chance to own the problem and build trust with police. But with limited resources and a balance of power that seems dangerously tilted toward the bad guys, it's clear that the money and man-hours involved could be put to better use in other, more proven strategies.
City leaders say parents, suspecting there are guns in the home, want help. Here's a suggestion: a St. Louis initiative from the mid-1990s, Consent-to-Search. In it, police and residents hatched a plan where parents in high-crime areas of the city gave police permission to search their homes and confiscate guns, in exchange for a promise that no gun prosecution would follow. In its first year, police seized 402 guns from juveniles; one out of every two searches yielded a firearm.
The effort attracted national attention, including from Justice Department officials, as a model to analyze and test in other cities. Ironically, like Boston's most effective crime intervention programs of the 1990s, Consent-to-Search withered after a turnover of police and community leadership.
It's a tough bargain, trading guns for offenders. Not the stuff of a TV slogan. But it would get people involved in the process of getting weapons off the street. And it would send an undeniable message to a target audience: A gun in the hand of a kid tears at the fabric of this city so deeply, we're willing to trade an arrest to get it.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...ials/articles/2006/06/02/beyond_gun_buybacks/
