348
The Guns Were Said to Be Destroyed. Instead, They Were Reborn.
(www.nytimes.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
348 points (94.4% liked)
News
23301 readers
1159 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Gun buyback programs are almost always a joke of one kind or another.
It’s wild how you get: gun buyback programs = bad. Rather than: corrupt corporations need watchdogs.
Gun buy backs are a total joke. All you end up buying is a bunch of busted ass guns that nobody wanted. Wish they would have one around here. I could unload a few that I hate, are useless or nonfunctional. Get paid son!
Saw a hilarious picture of an Australian buy back. Those ancient rifles, shotguns and rusted out revolvers were laughable. If you used a photo tool to gather the most common color from that pile, it would be the dark orange guns turn when they rust. Bet not 1 in 10 was functional.
And the idiots in the article were patting themselves on the back for doing such a fine job taking these guns out of circulation! They were so very proud.
How many mass shootings has Australia had in the past decade, again?
Mandatory confiscation and eliminating new sales =! US gun buybacks where the stores are still open
Kind of a weird position to say that gun buybacks played no part in removing the guns. 🤷♂️
What?
Australia had mandatory confiscation of ALL guns basically, and heavily restricted new sales. No guns, no shootings duh
The US has no such blanket ban, and so these kind of VOLUNTARY buybacks are generally pretty unhelpful for reducing gun crime and/or mass shootings. The buyback may ‘take off the streets’ X number of gun from a community, but if there’s still 5 million NICS background checks for new gun sales each year, then the US buyback are not achieving the stated goal of safer communities. The same money and time could be spent on better programs like Oakland CA is doing currently
(Not sure if my other comment got deleted successfully or not, so posting this next to it)
Sorry, I reacted to your second sentence without reading the rest. (I am Australian, I was a bit offended by reading "Australia had mandatory confiscation of ALL guns basically")
In Australia the gun buybacks were followed by decreases in gun violence. It's debated whether that was because of the gun buybacks or other policies, it's hard to be certain without two identical countries and A-B testing. Nonetheless: anything that makes guns and gun parts less available is likely to help and doesn't seem to have much in the way of disadvantages other than money. These days it's mostly through gun amnesties (not buybacks) so that problem is avoided.
Why would you “sell back” actual guns when you can build a functioning 12 gauge shotgun from $20 of parts from the hardware store? Slap a few of those together and turn them in for a solid contribution toward your next gun.
You think intentionally fraudulent programs with no meaningful oversight or meaningful accountability are OK? That's what seems wild to me but ok.
There's no way this is the first time this has happened either.
Maybe, then, you should be calling for more oversight and accountability of such programs rather than dismissing them as a joke.
You're making a shitload of wild assumptions about me (also, they are wrong), but ok: Good chat.
By the way, if you look further up the thread, you'll see that I called for just that.
You should use concrete to make sure those goalposts don't move around so much.
You should misuse more buzzwords and make increasingly wild assumptions.
Anyhow, you're going to have to try and start an argument with someone else now.
Goodbye.
Only in the US, again. Other places just crush that stuff and melt it.
Pretty much, yeah.
Why would you destroy a perfectly good gun, when you could sell it to someone who can legally own it?
Why is that?
There's no real oversight, no accountability, little to no regulation, and the prices they offer are almost always well below the fair market value of the firearm (never mind the black market value) so most people end up keeping, selling, or pawning the gun instead. Functional firearms are kept in circulation as a result (the opposite of the supposedly intended goal).
There are also cases of people just making $20 pipe guns to rip off even the well intentioned programs, some programs try to mitigate this, some don't, but there are no set rules beyond whatever the program decides.
I guarantee you, the program mentioned in the article is not the first to pull that reselling shit too.
These programs need to be regulated and there needs to be meaningful oversight or they will always be a joke. As it stands they are, at best, public relations campaigns and, at worst, fraudulent and potentially very dangerous.
That’s unfortunate. I wish we had competent government.
Groups like the NRA put a lot of money into lobbying politicians to protect the gun industry. They don't even really care about the 2nd amendment, they care about protecting the bottom line of companies like Colt and S&W.
Too busy focusing on Not Abjectly Cruel Government. Competent Government is another step once non-rich people are safe and have rights.
Buybacks don't make a lot of sense when the people turning in their guns can just use the money to buy new ones. May as well cut out the middleman and just give money directly to gun manufacturers.
I kinda doubt many are doing that, the prices buy backs offer are usually ridiculously low: They'd be financially better off just trading the gun, doing a private sale, or illegally selling it for even more to a convicted felon on the black market.
If buyback programs really wanted to get guns off the street, they'd pay more money and the process that occurs after the buyback would be transparent and verifiable.
What they actually seem to be are a mix of shady profiteering (like mentioned in the article above) or PR feel-good projects that allow politicians to act like they're actually doing something to fix the problem, when the reality is, it's a band-aid at best and profiteering off of undermining programs meant to reduce gun violence.
This assumes nobody has anything to do with their money other than spend it on guns.
It's an exaggeration, but here's something that's not.
There's demonstrably a big market for guns in the US. A certain number of gun sales will happen every year. Used guns reduce the demand for new guns, thus reducing the money gun manufacturers can make. By destroying surrendered guns rather than selling them, buyback programs are choosing not to let the surrendered guns satisfy part of the demand for guns, thus increasing the demand for new guns and thus the revenue of gun makers.
Buyback programs can reduce the number of guns in specific communities, but the number of people nationwide who have guns is limited only by the number of people who want guns and have legal access to them, not the availability of guns for purchase. In other words, the usefulness of a buyback program is largely predicted on the discredited theory of supply-side economics.
The alternative to "a portion of guns surrendered don't get destroyed" can be far worse.
How about just banning the profiteering off of fraudulent buybacks and making sure buy backs adhere to reasonable standards and oversight?