STLtoday.com – 11/20/2008 – St. Louis police board nixes gun buyback program with tie vote
But board President Chris Goodson said he was against the idea because last year’s buyback didn’t prevent this year’s rising murder rate.
“I’m trying to understand what the benefit is,” he told Isom. “If it’s to reduce crime, it doesn’t seem to have an effect.”
Board member Vincent J. Bommarito agreed. “I think it’s a waste of money,” he said.
Thank you for your fiscal responsibility Mr. Bommarito. It is rare for a politician to get with the program.
The effectiveness of gun buyback programs is notoriously difficult to assess. Critics say they are expensive “feel-good” measures that do little to reduce violence.
The critics are correct. A gun buy-back is the best way of getting rid of a crime gun. Want to see the turn in rate drop even further? Collect information about the people turning the guns in.
“Imagine that instead of guns, police, for whatever strange reason, wanted to get shoes off the streets. Would a shoe buyback reduce the number of people with shoes? Of course not, people would sell their old, tired shoes to the police and new shoes would quickly replace sold shoes. Same thing with gun buybacks.”
That is a great analogy, and largely spot on. The only people who benefit from gun buybacks are criminals disposing of evidence and gun shops with a lot of broken guns.
Isom told Goodson it would be difficult to pinpoint how removing several hundred guns — or not doing it — would affect crime. Police Major Al Adkins argued it would simply be good for the community to have them gone.
It would be good for the community to have them gone even if it doesn’t do anything? At best it would be irrelevant for the community.
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