‘Buy Back’ Gun Turn In Backfires

AmmoLand – by Dean Weingarten

There was a gun turn in event, ‘no questions asked’ in Newport, Oregon last Saturday, the 17th of January.   A number of second amendment supporters planned for the event, and attended.    From centaloregoncoastnow.com:

Fred Meyer Gift Cards will be available for working order guns (limit 3 gift cards per person, but more than 3 guns will be accepted). All firearms must be unloaded and transported in the trunk of your car or comparably secured in your pickup truck. No questions asked.

$175 Assault or assault-like rifle

$125 Handgun

$ 75 Long guns, such as rifles or shotguns

$ 25 High capacity magazine

$ 5 Pellet or BB guns (Arctic Circle Gift Car

All weapons collected are removed from circulation and melted down. The Newport Police Department will donate unique or antique weapons to an appropriate historical museum.

It is the essence of silly to pay money for valuable merchandise in order to destroy it.   Clearly, one of the primary purposes of this political theater is to drive home the propaganda message that guns are bad and should be turned into the police.  Private buyers at these events destroy that message, because clearly, if they are paying cash for guns, guns are valuable.  Because they are doing so in front of police, they must be legal.  At the Newport event, the number of private buyers was said to outnumber those who wished to turn in guns.   Many of the private purchasers brought and turned in guns whose value was very low.

One of the participants in the gun turn in brought in a functional single shot shotgun that he had made at home. He has a video on YouTube showing that it works. The turn-in refused to pay him for it. From opencarry.org:

I’ll be attending. In an attempt to work with the enemy I will be turning in three firearms while simultaneously open carrying. Two of those firearms were acquired at the last buyback for the purposes of turning them in……they’re really rough, unsafe, and only barely able to function. I paid $50 for both and they closed the turn in when I was just 4 or 5 people from the front of the line.

The third weapon is an evil one. It is a very dangerous 12 gauge ghost gun with no serial number. It was manufactured in the back yard, has no safety devices, and is decked out to be highly attractive to young children, especially little girls. Note the “Hello Kitty” motif on the entire stock!!!!

At the show, many of the motivated second amendment supporters were in line first, turning in the barely functional guns for gift cards.   One of the participants displays the numerous gift cards that he obtained.  The video producer shows the firearms that he was able to purchase at the event.  The nicest of the bunch was a Remington model 11 in decent shape.

 A local radio station reported that a total of 138 firearms were turned in.  It appears that most of them were of very low value.  I am not sure if the AR type rifle pictured is a turn-in or a prop for the photograph brought by a police officer.  The total did not list an “assault type rifle”.  From kxl.com:

They got a gift card in exchange. In the pot: 18 shotguns, 18 rifles, 35 semi-automatic pistols and 67 revolvers. Magazines and ammunition were also accepted. Each gun will get a background check and any that turn out to be stolen will be sent to the agency that reported it.

Another participant purchased an 70-year-old pump .22, but was asked by the seller to return it to him, so that it could be melted down.  I like to think that I could have talked him out of that foolish action, but the buyer showed his hyper intention to be agreeable, and returned the lovely antique to be destroyed.  From poster We-the-People at opencarry.org:

They ran out of gift cards 22 minutes into the four hour event…..patriots were lined up turning in JUNK and cheap 30 round mags. They were giving $25 cards for 30 round mags that can be bought for less than $10 these days.After running out of cards, they somehow got permission to give out IOU’s. That sure helped the CASH PAYING buyers though as we’d explain that there were no gift cards left but they could get an IOU and get mailed a card (maybe) in a couple weeks…..but WE PAID CASH NOW.

I picked up 5 weapons including a Model 11 Remington SemiAuto 12 gauge from 1926, a Mossberg bolt action 20 gauge from 1947-1950 (with no factory SerNo as they weren’t required back then an Mossberg didn’t do it), AND a pre 1900 12 gauge breech action with Damascus barrel……AND……. a couple of 22 pistols. One pistol is like NIB with serial numbers of box, barrel, cylinder, and frame all matching plus the original manual.

Where the disarmists have not made private sales illegal, these gun turn in events are a dying breed.

 Definition of  disarmist 

c2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included. Link to Gun Watch

About Dean Weingarten;

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

Read more: http://www.ammoland.com/2015/01/buy-back-gun-turn-in-backfires/#ixzz3PsxAg6kv
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Follow us: @Ammoland on Twitter | Ammoland on Facebook