Gun buy-back programs aren’t new, but gun control advocates have been promoting them heavily a week after the Las Vegas massacre.
These programs are usually hosted at churches and community centers. Armed citizens can turn in their weapons to law enforcement in exchange for gift cards usually worth less than $100. What most gun-control advocates don’t know is that these programs are basically just a placebo, a fact that some police officers are willing to admit. The only criminals
“We’ve gotten a number of different types of long guns, shotguns, rifles, hand guns .38s, .22s, a wide variety of weapons were brought in today,” Deputy Chief Eric Washington said to WGN-9 at a gun buy-back in Chicago. “If that weapon is in a home and it’s burglarized, it’s one of the first things going out. Like I said, it’s going to end up back on the street in somebody else’s hands, and potentially end up killing some kid — a resident of the city of Chicago.”
This is the only effective way gun buy-back programs have kept guns out of the hands of criminals, by removing the weapons from homes that will likely be burglarized. “The thing about a gun, it’s your constitutional right to have it, but the ones that shouldn’t have it should be in this program and turned in,” said local resident Sal Dandrea who turned in an old family heirloom specifically to keep it from being stolen.
Father Michael Pfleger, the pastor hosting the event at Saint Sabina church, believes the program helps keep his flock safe. “We’ve got to deal in America with this love affair of guns. Somehow we think guns make us safer, when every statistic is saying it doesn’t,” said Fr. Pfleger. “We’ve had 1,030 people shot in Chicago, but this is absolutely outrageous.”
Unfortunately the people participating in the buy-back program aren’t the ones responsible for the violence. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told reporters that he knows “the people who would come to a gun buy-back event aren’t the ones causing problems.”
Look at the recent crime statistics in Chicago and there’s no question he’s correct.