From: [r--l--r] at [Think.COM] (----- ------)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: _TAS_, Gun Buyback Frauds
Date: 25 Jul 1994 20:29:51 GMT
Here is an updated, spell checked version of _The American Spectator_
article on gun buybacks, including a letter to the editor in the August
issue with more good info. Circulate this one around people!
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Gun Racket by Mark Yost
From the June issue of _The American Spectator_ pg 46.
It was an anti-gun obsessive's Christmas wish come true: a gun buyback
program filling news pages and TV screens across the country with pictures
not of gangland violence but of people turning in guns for Toys-R-Us gift
certificates. Better yet, the dateline was New York City's most notoriously
crime-wracked drug bazaar, Washington Heights. So impressed was Bill
Clinton with the images he saw on television last Christmas that he's now
considering a national gun buyback program as part of his crime bill.
But buybacks have been provably unsuccessful in deterring crime, despite
the myths that have grown with their popularity. Using a list put out by
the Los Angeles Times of cities that had gun buyback programs, I called
those police departments and found that the number of homicides, in the
majority of cases, rose following gun buyback programs. (See box.) In
those cities where homicides fell, they increased the following year,
usually surpassing the number recorded the year of the buyback. In
Rockford, Illinois, the murder rate doubled, and in St. Louis a new
homicide record was established in the year beginning fourteen months after
the buyback. Police officers around the country said they never saw gun
buyback programs as having any impact on crime.
Buyback programs do not even take guns out of the hands of criminals. In
most cases, fewer than one percent of the guns turned in are stolen. While
many are unregistered, police say most of those are weapons that have been
in families for years and were held long before gun registration was
required. With the advent of gun control, previously legal guns became
illegal and law-abiding citizens were nervous about turning them in. "It
was a way for honest citizens to get rid of a gun," Rockford, Illinois
police chief William Fitzpatrick said of his buyback program. While many
buybacks are conducted in high-crime neighborhoods, statistics show it's
not the criminals turning in the guns. So one effect of the buyback is to
disarm the law-abiding citizens of statistically dangerous neighborhoods.
The initiatives gobble up scarce crime-fighting dollars. Although a number
of the programs are privately funded, even these often use public funds.
The New York City program that presented $100 gift certificates last
Christmas was privately funded - but under a longstanding city-funded
program, the participants also received $25-75 in cash. The media have been
lazy about covering these and other, less flattering aspects of buyback
programs. The New York Times hyped the surrender of one 9mm pistol,
correctly implicating such guns in street crime,but it wasn't until
paragraph seventeen of the 22-graph story that the reader learned the gun
had been sitting in the dresser drawer of a law-abiding citizen for many
years.
Some buyback programs fail on their own terms. In New Jersey, a man turned
in eighteen guns, some that couldn't even be fired, and collected $1,350 in
certificates for food, clothing, and furniture. "Had this guy sold the
stuff to a gun dealer, he would have gotten maybe $75 for the lot," a
police officer said.
At a Hartford, Connecticut program that gave $100, residents were legally
buying handguns at local gun shops for $60 and turning them in for $100.
One man came in with thirty-nine Chinese-made rifles and made a profit of
about $1,200.
And in Camden, New Jersey, a teenager turned in a sawed-off shotgun at a
buyback for $50 and used the money to buy a handgun nearby. He later used
it in a homicide.
(Insert table titled "Gun Buyback Programs: Costs and Murder Rates)
Buffalo, Feb. 1993:
$75,000 for 2,000 guns.
Homicides 1993--79; 1994--120 (projected).
Guns that were stolen: 1 percent.
Philadelphia, July 1991:
$21,000 for 1,000 guns.
Homicides: 1991--440; 1992--425; 1993--465.
Rockford, Ill., Sept. 1992:
$20,000 for 370 guns.
Homicides 1992--12; 1993--24.
St. Louis, Oct. 1991:
$341,000 for 7,500 guns.
Homicides: 1991--260; 1992--231; 1993--267; 1994--287 (projected).
Stolen: 1 percent.
San Francisco, Oct.-Dec. 1991:
$89,500 for 1,730 guns.
Homicides: 1991--96; 1992--117; 1993--132.
Stolen: less than 1 percent.
Seattle, Sept. 1992:
$90,000 for 1,800 guns.
Homicides 1992--60; 1993--67.
Syracuse, May 1992:
$115,000 for 2,700 guns.
Homicides: 1992--16; 1993--19.
Washington, D.C., Sept. 1992:
$20,000 for 400 guns.
Homicides: 1992--335; 1993--354.
Stolen: less than 1 percent.
---------------------------------------------
Letter to the Editor August issue of _The American Spectator_ pg 11
Garbage In, Guns Out
I would like to respond to Mark Yost's article ("Gun Racket," TAS, June
1994). Having studied the 317 weapons turned in at the 34th Precinct
during the famous "Toys for Guns" buyback program in November 1993, I can
report that the categories listed in all the print media reports were
inaccurate and misleading. My business was to assist publications such as
yours with weapons technical information. Having identified thousands of
firearms, I am qualified to to state that no Title 2, class 3 firearms
("submachine guns") were included in the surrendered group....
The collection did include several semiautomatic pistols, including a few
of the designated weapons that ore presently on New York Governor Mario
Cuomo's list of firearms to be banned from private possession in New York
State. Of the four weapons designated by the police officials as machine
pistols, both TEC-9s and the M-11 were in fact semiautomatic pistol; the
lone Uzi carbine was an older version, but was still a closed bolt
semiautomatic.
Mr Yost's observation paralleled those of the officers present that day.
The people taking advantage of the program by turning in garbage and
walking in and walking out with $100 gift certificates....Most of the
officers present stated in hushed tones that the weapons turned in were not
the ones out on the street doing the carnage and the only time a "gun with
a body on it" would be turned in is when the shooter disposes of the
weapon. It was reported that none of the surrendered firearms were
ballistics-tested to see if they were ever used in a crime before they were
destroyed (dumped at sea), which made the "Toys for Guns" a perfect place
to dispose of a weapon and not get caught.
-Drew Parmerton, Director
Special Weapons and
Tactics Information Group
New York, New York