The Futility of Gun Turn-Ins

The Futility of Gun Turn-Ins

Two years ago, explaining the effort, then-Mayor Richard Daley said, "We have just too many guns in our society. When someone has access to a gun, they use it." The gun buyback is a way "we can reduce the number of guns on our streets," says Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
But don't put too much stock in those pronouncements. The number of privately owned guns in America keeps rising, and at last count it totaled 270 million, or about one for every adult. But nationally, the homicide rate has fallen by more than half over the past two decades.

Except for the wasted government dollars, I like gun buy backs, because it means people who do not value guns and presumably don't know how to use them will relieve themselves of the burden.  The assumption there is that folks who are "turning them in" for $100 wouldn't be passing them around to someone else for $100. 

But the bigger statement is the one on the homicide rate.  The absolute numbers on homicides, when I see them, are horrifying.  In my city, there's a handgun death reported on the news nearly daily. 

Even so, the stats on homicides with guns are "sobering" - more than fifty percent are alcohol or drug related.  If you are sober and drug free, your odds of being a killer are statistically "microscopic."