The Back Alley Archives

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

The city collected 5,500 guns last Saturday in the annual buyback. The city gave out $100 MasterCard gift cards for each gun and $10 cards for BB guns and replicas.


Sixty of the guns and several BB guns were turned in by the Champaign-based Guns Save Life [yielding $6,240]…. Most of the money will go toward buying ammunition for an NRA youth camp in Bloomington. The rest will pay for four bolt-action rifles that will be given away to campers.


“This was rusty, non-firing junk that we turned in,” Boch said. “We are redirecting funds from people who would work against the private ownership of firearms to help introduce the next generation to shooting safely and responsibly.”

A police spokeswoman disapproved: “We host the gun turn-in event on an annual basis to encourage residents to turn in their guns so we can take guns off the street and it’s unfortunate that this group is abusing a program intended to increase the safety of our communities[.]” I should think that using the money for lawful training — including important safety training — is hard to describe as “abuse.” And if the police department’s objection is that it wanted to pay $100 for valuable working weapons that were worth more than $100, rather than for rusty junk that is worth less than $100, I think the department needs a bit of economics training.