Menino Targets Our Guns

The war on guns continues with Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s latest plan to offer a $200 gift card to Target stores for anyone who turns in their working gun to authorities. Certainly feeling the pressure of the crime problem facing Boston, Menino has decided to bring back this ineffective buyback program, which will do nothing to reduce gun-related crimes in Boston.

Joan Vennochi at The Boston Globe sees things similarly.

… as I scrawled notes during Tuesday’s press conference at First Parish Church in Dorchester, a man standing nearby offered up this review [of the buyback program]: “Good concept. It won’t work.” He declined to give his name, but said he did youth outreach work in the community. He doubted that many young people he knew would walk into a police station to turn in weapons.

Later in the day, the city recorded its 24th murder of 2006, when a gunman killed a man, execution-style, on Blue Hill Avenue. The victim got out of a gold Mercedes and put up his hands as if surrendering. But the gunman fired point-blank. Then, he fired one more time into the man now lying on the ground.

Does that sound like someone who is ready to give up his gun for a $200 gift card?

The Boston Herald editorial staff seems to have a more positive view of the program, but still doubts its effectiveness.

Count us among the serious skeptics of previous gun buyback programs in Boston. We were never convinced – and with good reason, it turns out – that a $50 cash incentive would pry the guns away from violent criminals.

(Unless, of course, the gun was broken and worthless . . . and the cash could finance a new one.)

But we’re willing to be convinced about this latest effort, which offers a $200 Target gift card to anyone who turns in a functioning firearm over a four-week period beginning June 12.
[...]
A word of caution – a 2004 report from the Governor’s Commission on Criminal Justice Innovation lumped gun buybacks in with other toothless criminal justice programs like DARE. No one should expect the late-night shootings to miraculously stop.

But tightly administered a program like this – well, it can’t hurt.

And a special thanks to those community groups and companies, including Target, that have contributed to the effort.

I can’t see how people who engage in criminal activity are going to willing give up their guns under any circumstances, never mind by walking into a police station…even if it is “no questions asked.”

The only people I see making that effort are a few law-abiding gun owners that can’t find the time to make it to the shooting range anymore or have been convinced that they are safer with the gun out of the house. Like many gun control efforts, the only result that I see from this program is criminals keeping their guns while more citizens they target will give them up. A recipe for disaster.

Is a $200 gift card to Target really worth losing your ability to protect your family from an intruder?

Matt Margolis is co-author (with Mark Noonan) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at The Buffalo Bean. Follow Matt on Twitter.