Gun Turn-In Schemes
Find No Shortage of Critics
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"...[Buy-backs are] often a
no-questions-asked policy that provides criminals with a legal
and foolproof way in which to dispose of a firearm that has been
used in a crime, all funded by tax-payer dollars..." |
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-- Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA) |
Fox News reporter Adrienne Mand recently took a look at gun
turn-in programs and apparently had little trouble finding
critics of schemes such as the Department of Housing and Urban
Development’s (HUD) BuyBack America. "Designed to reduce the toll
of gun violence," BuyBack America was launched last Spring in 84
communities and used funds from HUD’s Drug Elimination Grant
Program to purchase guns and destroy them.
David Kennedy |
In her November
22, 2000, report, Mand asked David Kennedy, a
senior researcher at Harvard University’s Kennedy School program in criminal justice, about such
turn-in programs. "They do very
little good," Kennedy said. "The pool of guns that get turned in
in buy backs are simply not the same guns that would otherwise
have been used in crime. If you look at the people who are
turning in firearms, they are consistently the least crime-prone:
older people and women."
Michael Romero, a research associate at the Violence Prevention
Research Program at the University of California, Davis, also
noted that "the guns that are turned in for these programs may
not resemble the guns that are frequently used in crimes."
Finally, Richard Rosenfeld, of the
University of Missouri-St. Louis, has also
studied turn-in programs, and told Mand: "People
should simply keep in mind what their goals are. If it’s reducing
violence, it’s not going to have an effect." Rosenfeld did say,
however, that he thought such efforts helped citizens who reside
in high-crime areas "to see that the larger community is trying
to do something." Unfortunately, that "something," as stated by
the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA), is often a
no-questions-asked policy that provides criminals with a legal
and foolproof way in which to dispose of a firearm that has been
used in a crime, all funded by tax-payer dollars.
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Chicago Tribune - Gun Buybacks Fail to Cut Crime, Killing
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