Common Sense Kills IN Gun Amnesty
Posted on April 5, 2011 by Robert Farago
http://thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/04/robert-farago/common-sense-kills-in-gun-amnesty/reprinted with permission of the author
“The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is postponing an event that would have allowed people to turn over their guns to police, no questions asked.” Well thank God for that. Or, in this case, Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry [above]. I’m not sure if Mr. Curry is a member of TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia. If he isn’t, he gets an honorary membership for figuring out what we’ve been saying since we first counseled against these bone-headed buy back schemes. “On the one hand, we’re completely supportive of any effort to reduce illegal guns on the street,” Curry told indystar.com . . .
But nevertheless, we have the responsibility of investigating existing crimes and coordinating with federal agencies to trace how these weapons are ending up on the streets in the first place . . .
He said he isn’t sure why his office wasn’t involved in preliminary discussions about the event, since it ultimately decides whether to prosecute people.
Bottom line: there is no scientific evidence indicating that gun buyback programs reduce gun crime. Even if you can see past the issue of the possibility of destroying murder weapons, potentially paying murderers for the privilege, these feel-good programs are a waste of time, money and energy.
Protect the weak. Prosecute criminals. How hard is that to understand? Oh look! Here’s Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Hey Paul, what’s your take on this?
But taking guns from people who aren’t considered high-risk might still ensure that they don’t fall into the wrong hands, said Paul Helmke, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and a former Fort Wayne mayor.
Too often, he said, those guns are stolen, or worse, discovered by children, who might accidentally fire them.
Though it’s probably best to do checks on the guns that are collected, Helmke said, it is better to go ahead without the checks than cancel the event and leave more guns in the community.
“It depends what the goal is,” Helmke said. “If the goal of the program is to try to find crime guns, then you want to do the testing. If the goal of the program is to get unwanted, perhaps unsupervised, guns out of the house, then you don’t want to discourage that. It’s a balance, I guess.”
I wonder how
Eve Carson’s family feels about that.
