$$$ for your firearms

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FIRE 2018
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$$$ for your firearms

Post by FIRE 2018 »

There was a program push years back called " Cash for your guns". It seemed to work well in the inner cities where people who needed money quick would turn in their firearms. With the rash of never ending gun violence and mass shootings in the USA looks like another opportunity for this program. And it's in our second amendment for the right to bear arms shall not be infringed...
Last edited by FIRE 2018 on Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:15 am, edited 3 times in total.

CS
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by CS »

A well regulated militia is what is in the second amendment.

Dream of Freedom
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Dream of Freedom »

What for? Do you think that someone who would consider a mass shooting would voluntarily give up their guns? You can't be that naive .

Riggerjack
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Riggerjack »

Cities used to run programs like this more. There was never a corresponding drop in gun violence, and usually, they are poorly planned and executed.

Seattle did this several years back. Traffic backed up onto I-5, all day, the line to sell guns was hours long, and blocks of people holding guns standing in line wasn't the image they wanted.

The fact that I was there with my wife, offering to buy guns from people looking to sell, and plenty of my fellow gun nuts were doing the same, didn't sit well with the mayor and his publicist.

What was supposed to be a feel good story about a community coming together to reject firearms, and make something artistic from former firearms and former City funds, turned into the Great Seattle Gun Bazaar, with clowns, galore! The cop who seized the empty missile launch tube, from someone, with no legal right, (it was a very scary looking fiberglass tube, good for the photo op, bad for the legal department.) The "open carry" activists, looking to turn this into some kind of protest. The poor people just trying to get to the hospital, and waiting in line forever, only to find out that today, you can't get there from here.

And that's just how gun "buybacks" (how does the state buy back a gun it never owned, at a standardized unit price?) go, nowadays. Maybe they worked as a publicity stunt at the end of the 20th century, but they certainly don't seem to have the desired effect anymore.

Which is too bad, really. One of the reasons I went, was to talk to the people who had guns, but didn't want them. It turns out there are plenty of ways people end up with guns they don't want or need. But because the laws are so overlapping and contradictory, with far too much misinformation, people don't get rid of them.

Stories I heard:
It was my dad's, and I got it when he passed.
It was in the attic, with a bunch of my uncle's stuff.
My dad drove taxis, and sometimes he took other stuff, for fares...
I'm a landlord, and a tenant left it behind (he had a sawed off shotgun, I wouldn't buy)
I bought a couch on Craigslist, and when we were cleaning it, I found a secret compartment someone had carved in with this pistol, and more cash than I paid for the couch! But I don't want or need a pistol.

There were enough stories, that it would make sense for an urban police department to have a "no questions asked, gun drop off point". But nobody gets press for a policy that just quietly works, so I'm not holding my breath.

FIRE 2018
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by FIRE 2018 »

@Dream of freedom

Hi fellow member, no I'm not that naive, but a concept of less guns on the streets-- maybe less shootings?

tonyedgecombe
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Dream of Freedom wrote:
Mon Aug 05, 2019 9:03 am
What for? Do you think that someone who would consider a mass shooting would voluntarily give up their guns? You can't be that naive .
Did you think these people are rational?

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unemployable
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by unemployable »

CS wrote:
Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:11 am
A well regulated militia is what is in the second amendment.
DC vs. Heller. The Supremes ruled that is not a necessary condition to gun ownership.

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Seppia
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Seppia »

It is pretty amazing to watch how the most advanced country in the planet still hasn't figured out that less guns = less killings.
Among all the things I don't understand, this is the most baffling by a significant margin.
Every single country in the world has figured this out, and no other country in the world has a comparable amount of mass shootings.
I guess America has somehow decided that the right of sane people to hold firearms easily is more important than saving a few lives per year.

It's extremely weird from a non-American standpoint.

FIRE 2018
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by FIRE 2018 »

Yes I can see that the concept of police giving residents $$ to turn in their hand guns and assault rifles may not always work. With the ease of buying and selling online, that's another way of selling your stuff, but it's not going to get more guns off the street. Also at the local guns shows in Florida and Texas, one can buy/ sell many types of firearms including military grade long guns. The shows attract every type of walk of life. And the states that allow open carry, there was a local dining place that was popular in the West Coast where there was a sign at the front door where for the customers to kindly not bring their assault rifles into the dining room.

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Bankai
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Bankai »

Seppia wrote:
Mon Aug 05, 2019 2:17 pm
Among all the things I don't understand, this is the most baffling by a significant margin.
But what about second amendment.

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Seppia
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Seppia »

Bankai wrote:
Mon Aug 05, 2019 2:26 pm
But what about second amendment.
I know it has been disproved by the Supreme Court itself, but still in terms of ridiculousness, it trails the "good guy with a gun" by a wide margin.

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Bankai
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Bankai »

Indeed. But people chose to believe in their holy books and therefore (another) discussion is pointless.

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Seppia
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Seppia »

I agree, I have given up on convincing anybody. It's just that the uniqueness of the American position on this subject is very puzzling.
There's the USA on one side, and literally the rest of the civilized world on the other

FIRE 2018
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by FIRE 2018 »

Every country has their own idea what patriotism is all about. In the USA one form of patriotism is the right to keep and bear arms and no one can take that right away.

ZAFCorrection
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by ZAFCorrection »

Right or not, globally popular or not, it mostly comes down to a matter of aesthetics. The US feels like it is natural to pay for easy access to guns with more gun deaths. The whole world feels like it is natural to pay for [striving for] a Western middle-class lifestyle with major destabilization of the climate and all that that entails in the future. The latter position is more popular but will probably kill more people, all said and done.

IlliniDave
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by IlliniDave »

We (well, about half of us) in this country hold some interesting beliefs simultaneously:

-Our president is a Nazi/Fascist/Communist/racist/zenophobe who will not yield power when he either loses an election or hits the term limit.

-Our ICE is a reincarnation of the SS.

-Our police forces are bands of racist thugs.

-Our armed forces are terrorists molesting half the planet.

-Our citizens should be disarmed.

If one accepts the first four, the latter is the last thing we should consider.

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Seppia
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Seppia »

Only the first four are utter bullshit :)

Jokes aside, I would challenge your assumption that the first four are beliefs from “half” the country.

I keep on seeing no real argument

“This is our patriotism”
“Other stuff is worse”
“If one believes this obviously over the top and unreal things then we would need people to own guns”

Not exactly compelling TBH

Dream of Freedom
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by Dream of Freedom »

Seppia wrote:
Mon Aug 05, 2019 2:17 pm
It is pretty amazing to watch how the most advanced country in the planet still hasn't figured out that less guns = less killings.
;) I had no idea Japan had such a gun culture.
Among all the things I don't understand, this is the most baffling by a significant margin.
American history has a lot to do with it. The US formed by a popular revolt against the greatest superpower at the time. So the idea of people defending themselves against an oppressive government is idealized. The founding fathers went to great lengths to ensure that nobody got too much power so that our nation wouldn't become oppressive itself. That's why we have a system of checks and balances between our branches of government. That is also why we have state rights, to separate power away from central government. So when people look at the second amendment through that lens what they often see is the ultimate check and balance, that citizens could stop an oppressive government by force. I don't know if that was the intention of the second amendment because it wasn't explicitly said, but if you talk to enough people on the far right (the main supporters of gun rights) that's what you will hear.

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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by jacob »

Seppia wrote:
Mon Aug 05, 2019 2:17 pm
I guess America has somehow decided that the right of sane people to hold firearms easily is more important than saving a few lives per year.
Exactly! And that decision was in some sense made at Sandy Hook which signifies a low point(*) in terms of "signal quality" (killing children---doesn't get much worse/more emotional than that?---but rock bottom in these terms lie somewhere below that). Quantity mostly(*) gets filtered: If mass shootings happen too soon after each other, they just get collated (like this weekend) or they become normalized (like in Chicago---we actually had 7 people get shot up in a park a couple of miles from here yesterday but since it's rather normal, it didn't make national news). So in that sense, I believe the US is stuck with general murder rates that are 3-5x the rest of the OECD and regular mass shootings.

(*) Another possible low point was Las Vegas. That actually got Trump to sign an executive order to ban bump stocks, so a large number of deaths also make a difference. But ... beyond that, nothing really moves the needle in the US.

From a practical standpoint---so ignoring the temporary outrage and the news cycle---the odds of being a victim of a mass shooting are still very very low albeit higher than getting hit by lightning or being a victim in a [foreign] terrorist attack. In terms of just being a regular gun victim, everyone has a lot of agency here namely because the correlation between "gun density" and murder/suicide rates is so strong (it even holds within the US when doing the math state by state). Specifically, if one has mental/depression problems, don't own guns! If one lives with a violent person who owns guns, move away! If one has sketchy friends with guns, find other friends! Follow those three rules (if you can---I understand that not everybody can) and the risk of being murdered drops to normal OECD levels.

IlliniDave
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Re: $$$ for your firearms

Post by IlliniDave »

Seppia wrote:
Mon Aug 05, 2019 3:20 pm
Only the first four are utter bullshit :)
On that we agree. :)

Is it precisely half the country? Can't say. Are those four views commonly stated publicly by political leaders at both the national and state level in the US? Yep, they are. I didn't just make them up.

I'm not making any argument, really. Not my swim lane to justify the US constitution to its critics. I don't, nor have I ever, owned a firearm, so it's nothing to do with being a "gun nut". I'm just not a "gun grabber" either.

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