LA Collects 1,700 Guns in Buyback Program, An Estimated 3.8 Million Still Free Not Mentioned By Mayor

The guy with the gun is Lt. Fred Booker.  The guy behind him is deputy police chief Charlie Beck.  The tommy gun Streetsweeper 12 gauge they are holding is one of almost 1,700 guns turned over to the LAPD.  In return for a gun, people were given a $100 voucher for groceries.

The goal of the gun buyback program is to make the streets safer.  The day netted 40 assault rifles (however they define those), 276 shotguns, 539 rifles and 841 handguns.  Someone even turned over a $10,000 Luger, but it’s doubtful they knew its worth.

The mayor held a news conference with the guns, to show that they collected guns and that he cared:

“When we do this again, we want to make sure we raise more money,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a Parker Center news conference, where the weapons were displayed on tables, blankets and anywhere police could pile them.

“Look at this,” Villaraigosa said as he pointed at the stock of a rifle. “It has an NRA sticker on it.”

In another article, the mayor noted:

“These are weapons whose sole purpose is to maim and kill people,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a Parker Center news conference. He added that more guns were taken off the streets in Los Angeles than there were shooting victims in the city all of last year.

The sole purpose? What about gun collectors? What about hunters?

I admit, the gun in my house is for maiming and possibly killing people…people who break into my house or otherwise threaten my family. I guess that makes guns bad, right?

But that’s a whole different article.

What is needed here is a different perspective, ironically from the same newspaper:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who instituted Saturday’s buyback, said Monday that it took more guns off the streets of L.A. than there were shooting victims in the city last year. That’s a highly misleading statement, implying a connection between gun homicides and the specific weapons handed in to police over the weekend. In truth, studies of municipal gun buyback programs have never turned up a shred of evidence that they reduce firearm violence.

It’s impossible to know how many guns there are in Los Angeles, in part because many are unregistered and illegally owned. But it’s estimated that there are about 258 million privately owned firearms in the United States (or nearly one gun for every American citizen), and there are about 3.8 million people in the city of L.A. So it’s safe to say that there are millions of guns hereabout. The 1,700 turned in Saturday did not significantly reduce the number.

What’s more, the guns that tend to be surrendered are very seldom the ones used by criminals. They are usually old, broken weapons turned in by older people who would rather have a $100 gift certificate to buy groceries (the premium offered Saturday to those who brought in guns) than a rusted revolver. A 2004 report by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that “the theory underlying gun buyback programs is badly flawed, and the empirical evidence demonstrates the ineffectiveness of these programs.”

So why do they have buyback programs if they are so ineffective? Because they are good publicity.

Politicians love to pose with piles of guns to show how they are working to make the streets safer. They love the face time on the evening news and the front page stories, complete with photos of them and the guns.

Look at that picture again. Are we supposed to believe that the gun he’s posing with was actually used in a crime recently?

They know that they publicity is worth more than the cost of the program, especially when the money is donated. However, when it comes to lowering gun crime rates, they aren’t very effective.