NY Daily News Thinks Buybacks Could Solve Chicago’s Crime

In responding to the SCOTUS ruling, Errol Louis of The New York Daily News offered an editorial that looked at both sides of the issue. Louis also looks at the roots of Chicago’s crime problem, noting that the city’s efforts to break up the major drug-gangs have left a free-for-all scenario in its place. This is seldom understood by the media, and hardly reported.

However, Louis believes that churches can help solve the problem, in part by offering gun buybacks:

“New York has seen churches play a key role in anti-violence initiatives. An NYPD/district attorney gun buyback program at four Bronx churches this year netted 1,200 weapons in a single weekend, and a group of Brooklyn churches this month will serve as sanctuaries for people with outstanding arrest warrants who want to surrender peacefully.”

While we don’t see any problems with church groups providing moral and even spiritual support to these communities, the idea that gun buybacks will do anything is nonsense. There is little proof that any of those 1,200 weapons netted in New York City were ever on the streets. This part of the argument is just wrong, and it is a shame because many of Louis’s other arguments were really that far off base.