From The Oakland Tribune. I really enjoyed his old sneaker analogy.
Alex Tabarrok is research director for the Independent Institute in Oakland, and associate professor of economics at George Mason University
02/23/2008
...
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."
It doesn't take much insight to understand why gun buybacks don't work. Gun buybacks attract low-quality guns from people who aren't likely to use them to commit crimes. The Oakland police, for example, bought a dozen guns from seniors living in an assisted-living facility. Are you relieved to know that Don Perata has disarmed these dangerous senior citizens?
The Oakland buyback was especially absurd because of the high price offered: $250.
Did no one running the program think to look at the price of a new gun? In
fact, the first two people in line at one of the three buyback locations were gun dealers with 60 firearms packed in the trunk of their car.
One wonders why the police even bothered to buy the guns from Oakland residents. Why not buy directly from gun manufacturers? ...
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