New York City Paper Calls for Gun Buy Backs
While we respect the motivations behind The Queens Courier calling for gun buy back programs, we have to wonder if such an initiative would actually have saved Kevin Miller, the unfortunate victim of recent gun crime in New York City. Buy backs could, in fact have the opposite effect than one intended.
One thing that is never made clear by the mainstream media is that these events don’t likely get guns out of criminals hands, but instead seem to make it seem as if they do to the general public. This could have the unexpected result of actually making some people inadvertently dropping their guard. And when that happens, bad things can be the result.
We would like to offer our condolences to the family of Kevin Miller, and would like to call on Mayor Mike Bloomberg to fight crime in New York City, and not try and focus so much on gun shows in other states. He is a city mayor and should be focused on things within New York City.
Boston Herald Offers One Side in Gun Turn-In Story
We wouldn’t expect the very liberal Boston Herald to do it any other way, but it is surprising that even this quote would go unchecked in a recent story that mentioned a gun turn-in program in New Bedford:
“David Lima, executive director of the Inter-Church Council, tells The Standard-Times of New Bedford that every gun turned in means less of a chance it will fall into the wrong hands and be used for criminal activity.” Read more
Firing Back: My Guns Aren’t “On the Street”
Time and time again, politicians including my own mayor (Mike Bloomberg of New York City) talk about how tougher firearm laws get guns off the street. But let’s consider a few points. Nearly all my firearms are stored out of state, and I do this because it is the ONLY legal way I can keep these guns. So most of the year I have no access to these firearms. If I had them in New York City these would be safely locked away as well. Either way these guns would never be “on the street.”
There have been countless gun buy back programs across the country with the intention to “get guns off the street.” And the bigger problem is that the mainstream media continues to praise these events for helping “get guns off the street,” while at the same time labeling anyone standing up for firearm rights as a “gun nut.” The point that we’ve tried to make time and time again is that criminals probably aren’t handing in their guns for cash.
Worse, there have even been increases in thefts of firearms in the days leading up to such events. And why not? Most of these are events are cash for guns, no questions asked. Perfect way to score some fast money. Steal a gun, hand it in, and the evidence of the crime is melted down. The problem of course is that such firearms were never on the street. But something tells me that many criminals will continue to be on the streets and armed.
Troy Police “Try to Get Guns Off Streets”
No one wants guns on the streets and in the hands of criminals, but the way the mainstream media keeps on reporting about it, it seems like a bigger deal than it actually is. And the latest example of this is from News10.com in Albany, New York. The site is reporting:
“The Troy Police Department is trying to get guns off city streets. The department is getting ready to hold its first ever gun buyback program.”
Oakland Gun Buy-Backs to prevent 1000 Future Murders?
It’s an amazing headline but that’s exactly the kind of deceptive, inaccurate message organizers of Oakland’s recent gun buy-back program are trying to spin to legitimize spending $250,000.
Do Gun Buy Back Programs Get “Guns Off the Street?”
That’s the message from The Buffalo News, which reported this weekend that a gun buy back program helped “get 711 guns off the street.” That was the headline, so we can’t (necessarily) blame the staff writer for that bit of reporting. On the positive side the article did include this fact, which we glad to see:
“Some studies show the programs are ineffective at lowering crime rates and getting potentially harmful weapons off the streets.
“In 2000, Lawrence Sherman, a University of Pennsylvania criminology professor, conducted a study for the U. S. Department of Justice and noted there was no direct correlation between gun buyback programs and the reduction of crime.”
Chicago Gun Buy Back: Was it a Success or Failure?
This weekend the Chicago Police Department had a gun buy back program, and WITN called the “program a success,” but was it really? The Chicago Sun-Times reported that “5,000 fewer guns” were turned in this year compared to last year’s event. The paper noted that the buy back couldn’t really be considered a success:
“This year’s total — 1,887 — was significantly lower than last year’s take of 6,800 guns, officials said.”
This was the fifth year the program has been running. But it is interesting to note that WITN would call this year’s event “a success.”
CBS News Chicago Says Gun Turn-in Programs Do Little Good
Well, this time we’re going to praise the mainstream media for a change, or at least one of the three news departments in the Windy City. This weekend Chicago is holding a turn-in program – a.k.a. one of those guns for cash programs. While the local ABC news Web site merely announced the event, and the NBC station claimed that the event has taken “18,000 guns from the streets since 2005,” CBS 2 in Chicago has taken the bold step of asking if these programs do any good?
CBS 2 even has a very strong quote from a reliable source:
“Illinois Gun Works Owner Don Mastrianni claims that Chicago’s program to clear its street of guns by offering to buy them and melt them down has probably not prevented even one killing.
“‘Criminals aren’t going to bring in their guns,’ Mastrianni said.”
But the sound bites keep getting better. Police officer David Montgomery was quoted in the article, saying:
“You can always get the guns. There’s the underground market out there. What can you do about it?”
Maybe the rest of the mainstream media will get the message as well.
