From: josh@Happy-Man.com (Joshua_Putnam)
Subject: Re: Protest Vote '92 (Was: Don't waste your vote on Bush or Clinton)
Reply-To: Joshua_Putnam@happy-man.com
Organization: Happy Man Corp., Vashon Island, WA 98070-7399
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 18:06:20 GMT

In <1992Oct12.224304.4117@gibdo.engr.washington.edu> bobk@gibdo.engr.washington.edu (Bob) writes:

>kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum) writes:
>| Well, if I were running one of these gun buy-back programs, I'd modify
>| the final step, destroying the accumulated weapons, to *sabotaging* said
>| weapons, then, reinserting them back into the black market.  Note that
>| people who acquired their weapons through non-black-market channels would
>| be unaffected; the latter can afford to have their weapons tested by a
>| gunsmith anyway.  

If the sabotage were of a sort that could be identified with
great certainty in a brief inspection, this might be safe
for legal gun buyers, but it would then be ineffective for
many criminal buyers who would also be smart enough to have
their guns inspected.  If the sabotage were less easily
identified, I'd expect serious problems when the damaged
guns re-entered the legitimate market (e.g. pawned or sold
to an innocent buyer).

>| This way, a black-market weapon stands a pretty good
>| chance of damaging the user when the trigger is pulled.  Over a period of
>| time, could the proportion of sabotaged or bogus weapons out there rise
>| to as high as 10 percent?  Would that change the incidence of violent crime?
>| Or would that have any impact at all on a pool of people, most of whom,
>| have nothing to lose anyway?  Would there be a shift to other kinds of
>| weapons?  If more knives were used, say, rather than guns, I'd reluctantly
>| have to count that as a gain of some kind.

I'm afraid it would be more likely to encourage theft of
"known good" private arms -- more house break-ins, more
attacks on gun shops.  

Also, not all criminals are stupid.  This might simply make
black-market gunsmithing more profitable.

>  I'll give that idea high marks for humor and originality, but I've got
>  another more practical idea.

>  Just watching on television, some of the guns that were turned in looked
>  pretty decent.  How about instead of destroying the guns, turning around
>  and offering to sell some of them to legitimate gun dealers, then using
>  the money to buy back more guns?

I agree.  It was really depressing to see TV coverage of the
Seattle buyback.  One little old lady was shown bringing in
an antique revolver that could have fetched several hundred
at a gun shop.  She said she needed the extra $50 to
supplement her Social Security.  If I'd been working there,
I wouldn't have taken the gun without first explaining how
much money she was throwing away, and how selling the gun to
the buyback program meant destroying a piece of history.  If
she still wanted to get rid of it for peanuts, I'd let her.

Besides using the profits to buy back more guns, they could
also be put to productive uses such as safety equipment for
police, anti-gang programs, crime victim compensation funds,
etc.
-- 
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