> He called the idea of buybacks “ridiculously stupid”, adding that “the people running this event are horribly uneducated about guns, gun crime and the laws surrounding the regulation of guns”.
I can see that offering more money than the cost of production is ridiculously stupid, as it just leads to unlimited production. But how is it stupid when all offers are below cost?
> how is it stupid when all offers are below cost?
That was his point - in this age of 3d printed and CAM'd gun parts, the cost of production is extremely low. He was getting $450 for a sear - a very small part. Even their rule changes don't fix this - for that kind of $$ I could have hundreds of those CAM'd or even 3d printed in metal, and use the $$ to pay for a decent chunk of a production shop.
Just a heads up: those are wildly illegal to manufacture. The few sears grandfathered in (legal to own/sell) are worth $20k+. This man risked a life sentence in federal prison driving around with a ziploc bag full of those things.
Trivial to 3D print, or file down a piece of scrap metal into the right shape. Just goes to show how inane gun laws can be.
As is synthesizing meth. Yet if you want it it's always within a few blocks distance. Imagine if you had a meth buyback. Same thing. The war on alcohol didn't work, the war on drugs didn't work, now we think the war on firearms will work. Politics has to have some demon to point at so voters will give away more power.
You can carve one out of sheet metal in a couple minutes. This won’t stop evil people.
Even worse, a self centering punch and 5 seconds can turn your AR-15 into an illegal automatic weapon as far as the ATF is concerned (just punch approximately where the auto pin would go).
The only people affected by these garbage laws are the ones who aren’t interested in harming anyone.
Technically, but by that standard everyone who's ever purchased marijuana at a state-legal dispensary is risking prison time as well.
It's also one of those situations where the practical reality of being caught for something like this is basically nil. Especially when the intent is neither to sell, distribute, nor use them yourself.
A sear is a standard part, and legal on its own. A specific design, an “auto sear”, prevents the weapon from locking back up in battery after the slide/bolt returns. That’s effectively a “machine gun” and unlicensed (technically, untaxed) ones are a felony to possess since 1981. The anonymous creator is an idiot for making them, much less using them in a publicity stunt.
The reality is that buybacks only get worthless guns and the occasional gun that has been sitting around for ages. Crime guns only go to the buybacks if they're in such poor shape they're not worth the buyback amount.
> James’ office said it responded to the loophole by giving buyback personnel more discretion to determine the value of weapons being handed in, [...]
Paying fair market value for the guns is the solution. Asking for gun donations without paying for them is another. If they do either of these, then the shenanigans stop.
> and setting a standard that all 3D-printed guns accepted by the program must be capable of being fired more than once.
This is dumb and will be ineffectual at stopping shenanigans. If they did even a minute of research they would know this new rule won't help. The people 'pranking' these buyback programs can and do make extremely cheap guns that are made out of metal pipe and can fire more than once: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/12/22/5-homemade-sh...
If you want to stop that, pay fair market value for the guns. Homemade guns have essentially zero market value, so stop paying people to make them.
> If you want to stop that, pay fair market value for the guns. Homemade guns have essentially zero market value, so stop paying people to make them.
this approach also has issues.
if someone wants to sell a gun for fair market value, they don't need the state as a counterparty. unless of course they don't legally own the gun, in which case the "fair market value" is zero. I guess you could appraise the gun as if it were legal, but then what if the person doesn't like the offer? are they expected to trust that there will be no repercussions for walking back out holding all the evidence needed to charge them with a felony?
seems to me the best and simplest approach is an amnesty box. getting to walk away without risk of prosecution should be enough of a reward for turning in a hot gun. and if the gun is in fact legally owned, why does the state want to take it off their hands so badly?
> if someone wants to sell a gun for fair market value, they don't need the state as a counterparty. unless of course they don't legally own the gun, in
which case the "fair market value" is zero.
Or,
Old widow has some rifles her dead husband left in her closet. She legally owns them, but she doesn't know that and she's afraid she might have done something wrong.
> Paying fair market value for the guns is the solution. Asking for gun donations without paying for them is another. If they do either of these, then the shenanigans stop.
But both of those suggestions may undermine the real motivations for these programs, especially the second one.
I am more concerned with the people participating in the other side of this exchange. If somebody wants to get a gun out of their house so they can stop worrying about it and want it destroyed, then the money is unnecessary. If the money is their motive for selling their gun to the police, then they should be given fair market value. These programs are calculated to exploit people desperately in need of cash.
How would you like it if you and your whole family were poor, and you learned that your grandmother sold a $1000 rifle for $100 of walmart gift cards because she was desperate, didn't know what the gun was worth, and trusted the police to not scam her?
BTW, many of these "buyback" programs are funded by people like Doris Buffett. Run by the police but paid for by wealthy donors. They can afford to pay fair market value, they just prefer to scam people.
> If the money is their motive for selling their gun to the police, then they should be given fair market value.
I agree there. I guess the point I was trying to make the program's logic could mean it makes sense for it to pay more than fair market value, even for 3D printed guns.
I didn't realize they could be low-balling prices and exploiting desperate people.
Yep. You want to pull guns out of the population that people don't care about enough to where they're willing to trade them for a cheap gift card. The people who'd actually participate in this program likely do not covet the weapons enough to protect and keep up with them, which are more likely to be stolen, or mishandled.
The term cobra effect was coined by economist Horst Siebert based on an anecdote of an occurrence in India during British rule. The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped. When cobra breeders set their now-worthless snakes free, the wild cobra population further increased.
No. Manufacturing NFA items without a completed and approved form 1 is a felony. IIRC most NFA items also need ATF preapproval before crossing state lines. This was Bad Idea City.
As federally-licensed firearms manufacturer (FFL07/SOT02), I can attest to how straightforward and even downright "easy" it is to create numerous firearms and firearm parts of varying legality. On the "not so illegal" side you have pistol slides, custom triggers, accessory railings, etc. that are all completely-legal to make, possess, sell, use, etc. It would be like 3D-printing a new case for a desktop computer.
On the other hand, you have things like removable drop-in auto-sears (RDIAS) [1], Glock selector switches [2], MP5 auto-sears, AR15 -> M16 conversion jigs, handmade silencers (suppressors) [3], and numerous other components that not only require a federal license to create/possess/use, but also require a special taxpayer status called an SOT (Special Occupational Taxpayer) [4] because all of the aforementioned items are construed as machine guns (even if the device merely converts a firearm to a machine gun, and of course silencers) under the National Firearms Act of 1934 [5], and later clarified with the Gun Control Act of 1968 [6].
In addition to those items, NFA also deals with short-barrel rifles (rifles with barrels under 16 inches in length) and short-barrel shotguns (shotguns with barrels under 18 inches in length) which are incredibly easy to "accidentally" own. However, the largest firearms loophole in the country is that by attaching a "pistol brace" to an otherwise regulated short-barrel rifle, you are in compliance. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are currently in violation of the National Firearms Act of 1934 because they possess these short-barrel AR-15's. The differences between these two configurations are strikingly and laughably small [7].
Especially with the machine gun parts, the idea of governments/municipalities expecting citizens to simply surrender them - even for "fair market" value - is simply absurd and altruistic.
Fun Fact: You yourself (in most states) can own a fully-automatic firearm! The only catch is that it has to be manufactured before May 1986, be registered under NFA, and transferred to you on an ATF Form 4 (which requires a $200 tax stamp [the same as it cost in 1934] and around 210+ days of waiting). These are known as "transferable machine guns" and are quite valuable despite their almost-identical resemblance to their semi-automatic counterparts. Here are some for sale: https://otbfirearms.com/nfa/transferable-machine-guns/
Don’t forget the extra fun fact that you can legally take out the the sear from an old transferable machine gun, put it into a new gun and have yourself a legal machine gun where only the sear predates the ban.
The way that these programs work, it is no questions asked (intended to get even criminals to turn in firearms, to prevent them from using in future crimes/suicides). So a "show ID to turn in" policy is a non-starter.
Making it so they only take working handguns, and if the gift cards were more on the order of $25-$50 makes it a more palatable to me from a cost-benefit perspective. But still evidence they actually work is pretty slim.
I won't argue with you on the effectiveness of a gun buyback because when Australia did it in 03 the follow up report determined that whilst yes, 70k firearms were removed from the population this didn't seem to curb gun crimes to a lower level prior to the buyback.
Australia's gun buy back could be considered a real political compromise, if you're willing to consider no one is happy with the results. IE total gun owners lowered from 6 percent something to half that. Number of guns per owner went considerably up, and total guns imported each year is higher than it's ever been.
Basically when you see an extreme (American) view on gun control trying to use Australia as an argument for their policy, you should just laugh at them. The numbers are so "inconclusive"/"manipulatable" that such a view can use the numbers to say whatever they want to their own uncritical base.
He transferred $21,000 of the public funds to his own pocket in an honest and legal transaction. On the whole this strikes me as a virtuous and patriotic thing for him to have done and I can only aspire to be this enterprising in my own business affairs.
I generally hope this is sarcasm. If not then it's disappointing so many view this man's actions as virtuous or patriotic.
If you don't have empathy for the problem then by all means ignore the actions that's being taken in an attempt to rectify the problem. By no means is a buyback going to solve the issue tomorrow but it certainly isn't hurting this man or anyone who's against the idea.
If this man truly wanted to "point out the flaws" with this program he simply could've made the drive and speak his mind at a city council meeting, email, leave a voice mail to the party in charge of the program.
There's no shortage of apathy in this country and exploiting a public system rather than coming together to find a solution seems counterproductive.
Yeah like all those other times they forced citizens to give up their firearms. I consistently hear this but outside of maybe 4 senators that push a bill that prevents the sale of a certain model of firearm it's a boogeyman at best.
> No one is forcing anyone to give up their firearms, why does this keep being argued?
You're straying rather close to intellectual dishonesty here. I think you're well aware there are some people in the USA who very much do want to force people to give up their firearms. Furthermore, similar groups have largely succeeded in other countries. That's why it keeps getting argued.
> It's even more comical when firearm manufactures record their most profitable years when Dem's control the white house.
I don't get the joke. What's funny about a perceived future shortage pushing demand forward in time? We saw the same dynamic with toilet paper in 2020. I suppose it's kind of funny that the perception of a shortage then creates a shortage, but somehow I don't think that's what you meant.
it demonstrates that the program organizers either don't understand enough about firearms to realize they would be "overpaying", or they simply don't care about wasting public funds.
it also raises doubts about the number of guns/parts that were actually removed from circulation (vs purchased/manufactured only to turn in). I recall a similar story where a guy simply bought the entire stock of cheap shotguns from a local Walmart and turned them in for $80 profit each.
Those programs are universally designed to buy votes, rather than firearms.
They are wasting public funds to further their narrative that gun violence is an entirely natural phenomenon - sort of like a hurricane - where people people involved in it are universally victims of the circumstance and have no agency in the matter. It's the only explanation why presumably rational people would set up asinine-economics schemes like these:
Eg offering $400 for garbage hi-point 9mms pictured that change hands for $100-200 on the black market - essentially a wellfare subsidy program for gangbangers.
I can see that offering more money than the cost of production is ridiculously stupid, as it just leads to unlimited production. But how is it stupid when all offers are below cost?