(GunReports.com) — Criminals will have trouble finding any appeal in [an offer to turn in their guns]. In the first place, their weapons may have cost far more than $100, as handguns and long guns of good quality usually do.
In the second place, thugs practice a trade in which a weapon is essential for doing business. A pistol used in the course of armed robberies will pay for itself many times over. A $100 gift card won’t.
The experience elsewhere offers little hope that the program will make a noticeable difference. After a successful 1974 buyback in Baltimore, the firearm homicide rate jumped by 50 percent. A study of a Seattle effort found it “failed to reduce significantly the frequency of firearms injuries, deaths or crimes.”
This is the pattern wherever turn-ins take place, Chicago Tribune editorial board member Steve Chapman concludes.
Read it here.
