Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Them Evil Guns

I saw this article yesterday, and Mostly Cajun linked it again.  It seems that the folks in Baton Rouge want to do a gun buy-back and they've got some money from the Circle-K company to help get those evil guns off the street. 

People can get up to $200 in gas certificates for turning in a gun. Mayor Kip Holden wants to make it clear legal gun owners are not being targeted.
The Circle K Corporation is putting up about $15,000 to assist in the buyback program. A total of $40,000 is available thanks to additional funds from local law enforcement agencies.
Yeah, it's easier when you use someone else's money.  Still, it's good to get crime guns off the street.  However, doing so as part of a government program makes it easy for criminals to dispose of evidence.

So, if a gun is found to be stolen, will it be returned to its lawful owner?  Will the churches be taking names of people turning in guns for gas cards, or will this be an anonymous program.  If the gun is stolen, I'd like to think that the police are making sure that the churches get enough information to make sure that the thief is arrested and prosecuted.

Will the guns be tested to see if they match any known crimes.  If a gun was used in a murder and the buy-back is anonymous, it should be really easy to turn in vital evidence without the police knowing they even have it.

3 comments:

Old NFO said...

Yep, that's the oopsie... when a crime gun shows up and lo and behold, nobody remembers the person that turned it in...

Rivrdog said...

For police, gun buy-backs are a non-starter, not only for the reasons you listed. Anyone with a few smarts will realize that any old junk gun will bring them far more at a buy-back than it would in the marketplace, and they do the buy-backs, taking the place of all those awful gansta Glocks which were supposed to be out there.

Hell, in my town, they even tried to lure gangsta guns in by giving NBA basketball tickets as a reward. The gangstas are smarter than that, but I've eaten quite handsomely off of someone's generosity at Kroger Foods, the source for the usual payments. I had a few old Iver Johnson top-break .32 revolvers which bought me almost a month's groceries apiece. I couldn't have gotten $15 each for the old wheelguns on the market.

Cybrludite said...

Hmmn, I've got a POS Cobray derringer in .45 Colt/.410 that's not worth trying to sell...