As Texas House Bill 3053 heads to Governor Abbott’s desk, it is serving as a broader reminder to all states of the gun “buybacks” scam, only this time with a legislative solution to this anti-gun mainstay. Time and again, decades of research and examples of diversion to criminals city by city continue to prove these initiatives to be futile, if not counterproductive. Yet anti-gun propagandists, and well-meaning dupes who get roped into supporting them, continue to find “buybacks” irresistible in most states. Texas took seriously a new approach to what is now an old problem by running legislation to ensure that municipalities and counties cannot adopt or enforce any ordinance or measure that facilitates a gun buyback program, i.e., that taxpayer resources are not expended on gun control cheerleading events that lack any real public safety value.
All government-sponsored gun “buybacks” in Anytown, U.S.A., have the same inherent flaws. First, nearly all of these programs are implemented at a county or city level using significant taxpayer monies. These programs often offer cash, gift cards, or other incentives such as sporting event tickets for firearms under the guise of public safety. On their face alone, these programs appear illogical as a method to reduce gun violence. The “buyback” itself is largely anonymous by design, often under a “no questions asked” format. While that may, in theory, give a criminal opportunity to easily rid himself of an illegal firearm with a reduced risk of prosecution, most of the firearms turned in are old and inoperable, not the sorts or firearms usable in crimes.
Yet neither option is poised to enhance public safety. In the first, the trigger puller remains at large, only without potentially incriminating evidence and slightly enriched on the taxpayers’ dime. In the second, the buyback organizers serve as glorified garbage collectors.
Additionally, in most cases, the offered prices are less than the potential sale price of a firearm in good operating condition. In other reported cases, people were receiving large sums of money for items that were not even firearms; recall that New York was forced to change their buyback rules after a participant exploited the system by using a 3D printer to make parts in bulk that he exchanged for over $21,000 in gift cards.
Again, the most rigorous studies over the course of decades now show no empirical evidence to support that these initiatives have any anti-crime benefit even after utilizing millions of dollars. In Harris County, Texas, the county alone provided over $1 million dollars in taxpayer money specifically for gun “buyback” programs. These programs continue to raise questions about the relative effectiveness of each intervention when these notable sums and resources could and should have been redirected in a more meaningful way for citizen safety.
The gun owning community finds these programs cringeworthy; as well, the term “buyback” falsely suggests that the government had ownership of these firearms in the first place. NRA, in working to protect Second Amendment rights in all 50 states and their municipalities, knows all too well the necessity of guardrails to check the misuse of local government authority, and this is what Texas is ultimately seeking to do.
Local efforts like gun “buybacks” can have an enduring effect on establishing an official anti-gun orthodoxy, while serving as a socially engineered distraction to the honest conversations needed on real safety measures. States should be focusing on efforts that provide solutions, not merely attention, and what happens next in Texas is worth watching for all states.
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