Gun buyback foolishness

I happened to be in the Bay Area a couple of weeks ago, where I read the praises sung of the gun buyback that had just taken place in crime-ravaged Oakland. The local news outlets hadn't a bad word to say, even though it seemed clear to me that the main effect of offering $250 per gun would be to throw away funds desperately needed for law enforcement, enriching opportunistic gun traders turning in weapons that are worn out, unserviceable, and unsalable.

Sure enough, a subsequent wave of articles spells it out. The Oakland Tribune, for example:

Dealers from as far away as Reno and Fresno turned up to dump their unsold merchandise.

The first two people in line at Christian Cathedral, one of the three exchange locations, were gun dealers with 60 firearms in the trunk. Some guns turned in still had price tags on them.

Event organizers quickly instituted a five-gun limit. But why hadn't anyone thought to set an individual maximum from the get-go? And, if the purpose was to get guns off of the streets of Oakland, why didn't officials require that sellers be local residents?

Within a couple of hours, police had run through the $80,000 that Perata had raised from private donors.

Yet there were still hordes of people who'd been waiting for hours. Rather than send them away, Chief Tucker decided to give them vouchers.

Now, the cash-strapped police department has to cough up $170,000 to pay those who got left out in the cold over the weekend.

Police officials say they may ask the City Council and Perata -- who engineered the fiasco -- to make up the shortfall.

Economist Alex Tabarrok also comments:

The buyback has been criticized as a poorly organized fiasco, but even the critics say it was "the right idea" and "a step in the right direction."

On the contrary, the buyback was a bad idea from the beginning. Gun buybacks have been tried before, in cities from Seattle to Washington, D.C., and they simply don't work.

In an authoritative study, the National Academy of Sciences reported that "the theory underlying gun buy-back programs is badly flawed and the empirical evidence demonstrates the ineffectiveness of these programs". . .

One wonders why the police even bothered to buy the guns from Oakland residents. Why not buy directly from gun manufacturers? . . .

There are 150 to 200 million guns in the United States, so there are plenty of low-quality guns to be sold. An Oakland gun buyback is like trying to drain the Pacific -- every bucket of water you take out is instantly replaced. Even large gun-buyback programs are unlikely to have significant effects. Australia spent half a billion dollars buying guns, with no significant effect on homicides by firearm.

Tabarrok's blog entry on the subject is here. I've heard the argument that buybacks are important as symbolic gestures, but this doesn't seem especially convincing when real money is being spent and real results are needed.

Posted by David on February 25, 2008 9:28 AM