Mayor Catherine E. Pugh and Interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle of Baltimore, Maryland have found the solution to firearms violence in their city – or so they think. In a news conference Tuesday, December 11, the duo announced a series of three gun buybacks across the city.
Got an old firearm you don’t need anymore? Perhaps it’s falling apart and needs to be thrown away – or maybe it’s stolen. None of that matters; the city will buy them all, no questions asked. Gun buybacks don’t tend to completely disarm very many criminals, so what are they good for? Well, they’re a great way to fence stolen weapons, for one.
Pugh’s Great Idea
Those willing to part with their – a or even someone else’s – gear can rake in $25 for high capacity magazines, $100 for revolvers and pump/bolt-action long guns, $200 for semi-automatics, and $500 for full- autos.
And it’s entirely anonymous. They won’t even ask your name.
So for those of you wondering if anyone who legally owns a fully automatic weapon would sell it for – at best – 10% of what it cost them to begin with, and that’s not counting the $200 tax, well, of course not. They would be hard pressed to find a legitimate semi-automatic rifle owner who would give up their weapon for $200. It seems quite likely that the majority of the firearms sold to the city will likely either be stolen or broken.
The high capacity magazine deal isn’t bad. Cheaperthandirt.com offers the ProMag AR-15/M16 42 round for a reasonable $13.97. One might be tempted to place a bulk order ahead of the event! But casual observer beware: There’s something hidden at the bottom of the announcement that most of the media at large has either missed or chosen to ignore. “No weapons brought into the location will be allowed to be taken out.” So if you carry and think the Second Amendment will protect your right to stop by and see what it’s all about, think again. They’ll take your gun if they know you have it – liberty be damned!
Winners and Losers
So who wins when public funds are redistributed into the hands of either those ignorant enough to trade their guns at a loss or bold enough to sell stolen merchandise to police officers? Only the anti-gunners. Whether it’s Grandpa’s old broken six-shooter, a stolen AR-15, or an M60 machine gun – never mind how it was acquired – every item collected will, allegedly, be destroyed. Why? Well, as Pugh repeatedly said, they just want them off the streets. Forget about the taxpayers. Who cares about the chumps who had their guns stolen – including the gun stores that have been robbed?
How’s that for irony? Provide an incentive to steal firearms in the name of curbing gun violence, and then instead of returning stolen weapons or paying restitution to the victims, give their tax dollars to the thieves and destroy the gear.
Even Pugh and her ilk are losers in this story, if their motives are, as they claim, to get guns off the streets. According to The Baltimore Sun, the 2012 buyback brought in a whopping 461 guns. But there were 235 homicides in the city the very next year. There were 211 in 2014, 342 in 2015, 318 in 2016, 342 in 2017, and 294 so far this year. In 2011 and 2012, 197 and 217 people were murdered, respectively. And with numbers like that, there are no winners.
