Terribly uncomfortable.
For many years, cities all over the United States have offered Gun Buyback programs where your surrendered firearm will earn you a gift card for fuel or groceries. These buybacks, hosted by police stations, have become more frequent since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary and the theater in Aurora, Colorado. The premise is that if there are less guns on the street, there will be less robbery and homicide. For many, the idea seems brilliant. "Less guns = less crime and sadness!" They proclaim.
In 2012 (the year of the Sandy Hook shooting), there were 625 murders committed with shotguns and rifles.
That's a lot.
In 2012, there were 1,196 murders committed with hammers and fists.
That's a lot.
As a Christian, I understand that man's thoughts are wicked, and without the redemption of Jesus Christ, people will do terrible things to other people. They'll just keep on doing those terrible things with whatever tool or object they have at hand. Uh, pun not intended.
As a Graber, I understand that guns can be used for harm, but they are tools. No more, no less. Like a golf club or a baseball bat or a screwdriver or one of those teeny little brushes that puts on mascara. Guns used properly (I am reluctant to use the word "recreationally" because that makes guns sound like marijuana) can be a whole lot of fun.
Where was I? Oh yes, gun buybacks. Bring all your unwanted firearms and ammunition to the police station, and exchange them for some gift cards******!
*Ammunition will be accepted for surrender, but will not qualify for a gift card.
**One gift card per person, regardless of the amount of firearms surrendered.
***The surrendered firearms cannot have been previously stolen.
Cedar Rapids is a city about 45 minutes from where I live. A new police chief was recently elected and he thinks gun buybacks are the veritable knees on the proverbial bee. Cedar Rapids' previous gun buyback was staged in 1994, at which the CRPD received over 500 guns and destroyed them. This year, the Police Department was informed that they could not use federal funding for the gift cards. If the police wanted a gun buyback, they'd have to fundraise for it. Police Chief Wayne Jerman immediately began fundraising for the buyback. He called on the businesses of Cedar Rapids to donate funds.
Chief Jerman had a few problems with his fundraiser, though. This is Iowa, and although we're home to two exceedingly liberal colleges, the vast majority of the population is comprised of practical, no-nonsense conservatives. Those conservatives run businesses, and those businesses aren't about to donate money toward a gun buyback program. The backlash of being involved with a gun buyback would be devastating to most local business. No siree bob, they didn't want any part of that.
So Police Chief Jerman ended up with $1,700 after a year of fundraising, which was enough for 17 guns. For every gun surrendered, citizens would receive a $100 gift card to Hy-Vee, a local chain of grocery stores. Things were looking pretty grim, but in the very last week before the gun buyback, the EMT's sent a matching donation to the police station. Perhaps the EMT's thought that their donation would ensure fewer gunshot wounds to attend to.
Armed (heh, pun!) with $3,400 NO WAIT A SECOND A GOOD SAMARITAN JUST DONATED $200, BLESS HER SOUL! $3,600.00, the Cedar Rapids Gun Buyback was on for Saturday, September 27th at 9:00am.
Enter the scheming, greedy, ties-to-the-Black-Market-and-possibly-the-Chinese-Mafia no good dirty rotten GUN BUYERS. Encircling the gun buyback venue like vultures, their beady eyes roved for firearms to purchase with cold, capitalistic cash.
Those gun buyers included myself and my good friend Brooks.
Many guns are worth far more than $100, so we went to Cedar Rapids early, pockets full of cash, in order to barter with the townspeople that came to the buyback with their guns. After all, it's legal for a citizen to sell a firearm to another citizen (handguns require a license, which I possess) and for goodness sakes this is what America is all about. Capitalism and things that explode!
A nearby bald eagle shed a single, majestic tear at this display of freedom.
I thanked the farmer and moved out onto the street, where I found my friend Brooksy haggling for firearms.
Several of the guns Brooks found were in good condition, so he offered $125 apiece. One man sold me his .22 caliber Phoenix Arms handgun after he checked my firearms license and determined I wasn't a hooligan. I paid him $100 cash for it.
Available to non-hooligans for the low, low price of $100.
(This is a similar kit to the one I purchased, but not
the exact kit. Mine came with only the short barrel)
(This is a similar kit to the one I purchased, but not
the exact kit. Mine came with only the short barrel)
A woman with some ammunition stopped in, and I talked to her for a bit. She said I probably wouldn't want the box of "a mix of all sorts of calibers." I was considerably interested in taking a look at the ammo, right up until she told me it had been sitting around for close to 30 years. I chuckled in surprise and agreed that I wasn't in the market for corroded ammunition.
An older man drove up in a van and I asked him what he was bringing in. He pointed to the two revolvers on his passenger seat, and my eyes widened. They were tiny, able to be concealed in the palm of a hand. Brooks and I speculated on the caliber of such small firearms.
".22 caliber?" I inquired.
".25 caliber, it looks like." Corrected Brooks.
"Actually they're mace pistols!" The man chortled. "Bought 'em for my daughter when she was in college, years ago." (I think he mentioned something about the 1970's being a crazy time.) "I don't think you can get the mace capsules for them anymore, though."
He grabbed one of the revolvers and pulled the trigger several times. It cycled the cylinder but there wasn't anything in the chambers. The guns, made of steel and wood, were very realistic and would have been quite the deterrent as they were drawn from a young woman's purse. Or fanny pack...? Who knows. The 70's seem sketchy to me.
A week prior, I had told my neighbor Shane about the whole operation. "We're gonna run up to CR and save some guns from destruction! Oh, and I can take your old shotgun and try to get a $100 gift card for it if you want." Shane agreed wholeheartedly. So I had Shane's rickety old shotgun along to hand in. After buying the Phoenix handgun, I jumped into line to surrender the shotgun. With 20 vehicles in front of me, a kind police officer came to my window and told me that unfortunately there would not be enough gift cards to reach to me. The police officer informed me that they would still gladly take my firearm, but I'd get nothing in return. The break-action shotgun was not in working condition (Shane and I were convinced that if you looked at it funny, it would shoot you) but it was worth more than nothing, if only as a wall decoration. I exited the line, hopped out of my car, and went back on the street to buy guns.
By 9:30am the 36 gift cards were all gone. Other citizens were being informed that the gift cards had run out, so they elected to either hold on to their rusted, bent, scratched firearms until the next buyback or sell to us. We were still out on the street, and they were more than glad to get some cash for their unwanted firearms.
The owners were happy, Brooks and I were happy, everybody was happy.
Except for the police officers.
Like the farmer had mentioned, the police officers constantly patrolled the parking lot to make sure that no capitalism was taking place on their property. Out on the street we were perfectly fine, but under the policemen's watchful gaze several people got nervous and refused to deal with us. Around 9:45, a man in a minivan hauled up by the parking lot but stopped when I waved to him. From the passenger window, I informed him that the gift cards had run out, but would he be interested in cash? He declared he would certainly be interested. He told me to open the back hatch of the minivan, where his Mossberg pump shotgun rested behind the back seat. On the driver's side window, a police officer was standing at the entrance of the parking lot. The van driver called out to the police officer, "Is this legal?" The police officer glared in my direction. I didn't see the glare, but I could feel the heat. I didn't mind; I was too busy drooling over the beautiful Mossberg 500A in the back of the van. "I don't like it," said the police officer, "but I can't stop it." I handed over the cash and the driver left.
By 10am there were only a few stragglers stopping by the Civic Center. Several other buyers had drifted over to Brooks and I and we talked about our purchases. When I showed the Phoenix handgun that I had bought, one of the buyers casually asked me, "How much you think you'll get for that gun?" "Oh, I'd like to sell it for $125." I replied. The buyer whipped $125 out of his pocket and once I recovered from my surprise, I sold it to him right there.
Most of the guns brought in were complete junk: BB guns, ancient shotguns, old rusted .22 single-shot rifles...things worth far less than $100. (So I expect the EMT's are going to see considerably less BB gun and rusty .22 caliber rifle-inflicted wounds out there in the streets and alleys.) But there had been a few gems. Brooks walked away with a nice lever-action 30-30, an old German pistol (which turned out to be a knock-off Luger), and a Snake Charmer.
No.
YES.
While we talked, a station wagon pulled up. The driver met every single criteria we had for a jackpot: an elderly woman bringing in her husband's guns. She wouldn't know the guns' values and ultimately hand the costly firearms to the police. We were there to rescue her from her lack of firearms expertise and send her home with a wad of cash.
(Like this woman in Hartford Connecticut that brought in a WWII German machine gun to a buyback. The kind police officers told her that the gun was worth far more than a gift card, to the tune of $20,000. The officer said "We did not take the gun in for the gun buy-back program. If we took it as part of the buy-back, we would have no choice but to destroy the gun. We don't want to destroy that gun." I sincerely appreciate policemen like Officer John Cavanna.)
The little lady confirmed our hopeful suspicions when she said, "I've brought several of my husband's guns. He has Alzheimers and can't use them anymore." We nodded sympathetically while mentally calculating our cash reserves and eyeing the three cloth-wrapped firearms in her station wagon trunk. We carefully unwrapped the first, and found it was an old 12-gauge shotgun that looked like it had sat unused (and uncared for) the last 20 years. The second firearm was an equally old Stevens 12-gauge shotgun that looked in better shape, but the old man had taken a hacksaw to it and shortened the barrel. Short-barrel shotguns require a specialized license to own in Iowa, so we left that one alone. The third firearm was a bolt-action .22 rifle, in okay condition. It was worth around $80, which Brooks offered. The woman declined and said, "I'd really like to get $100 for it, so I'll just wait until the next gun buyback." Like many Iowans, that woman was very sensible.
While we talked with her, KWWL News videoed us, most likely muttering cutting remarks about buzzards encircling a poor elderly woman. The little old lady looked toward the camera and whispered, "I don't want to be on television." One of the other buyers nearby said "KWWL tried to interview me earlier but I politely declined. They don't speak very highly of gun buyers and I didn't want to give them anything to use against us." We agreed. Gun buyers are cast in a negative light and many interviews are thinly veiled interrogations, with reporters hoping to uncover criminal intentions. So Brooks and I stood shoulder to shoulder and the elderly woman hid behind us. After talking with her for a while, we thanked the little old lady for stopping by and she left.
A few minutes later, a pickup towing a trailer came hauling down the street toward us, so we moved to the side to let him pass. At the last possible moment, the driver stood on the brakes and whipped into the Civic Center parking lot. We were shocked. He had a firearm and we missed it! "Oh well," we consoled ourselves. "It was probably junk." We found out later that the driver received exactly zero reward for the $500 Glock handgun that he surrendered. We would have gladly offered $200-$300 cash for it.
The firefighters helping with the gun buyback were extremely friendly and totally on our side.
"Man, that last handgun just about made me lose my job!" Said one of the firefighters, referring to the Glock. "I would have gladly taken it home with me to keep it from being destroyed."
"Can we take a look at the surrendered firearms?" Brooks asked.
"No, sorry, you can't see them." Said one firefighter.
"Yeah, you can't see them under all the saliva we drooled over them." Laughed another fireman.
Shortly after that, we said goodbye to the other buyers and left.
The Cedar Rapids Police Department called the gun buyback "a success". 72 guns and various supplies of ammunition were surrendered and destroyed.
Brooks and I called Operation "Buy Back the Guns at the Buyback" a success too. Between the both of us, we rescued five firearms from the smelter. The other buyers purchased around 10 firearms total. Together we reclaimed a small handful of firearms and put them into decent, responsible hands. Hands that like to fire bullets at clay pigeons and plastic jugs filled with water. We're already looking forward to the next gun buyback.
No comments:
Post a Comment