Myth: Gun “buy back” programs get guns off the streets

Fact: According to the federal government, gun ‘buybacks’ have “no effect”.¹

Fact: “Buy backs” remove no more than 2% of the firearms within a community. And the firearms that are removed do not resemble guns used in crimes. “There has never been any effect on crime results seen”.²

Fact: Up to 62% of people trading in a firearm still have another at home, and 27% said they would or might buy another within a year.³

Fact: More than 50% of the weapons bought via a gun buy-back program were over 15 years old, whereas almost half of firearms seized from juveniles are less than three years old.⁴

Fact: According to a variety of sources, the actual effect of gun buy-back programs is to:

• Disarm future crime victims, creating new social costs.

• Give criminals an easy way to dispose of evidence.

• Cause guns to be stolen and sold to the police, creating more crime.

• Encourage people unlikely to commit crimes (elderly, women, etc.) to sell their guns.

• Encourage people to buy cheap guns and sell them to the government for a profit.

• Keep stolen guns from being returned to their rightful owners.

Fact: “They do very little good. Guns arriving at buy backs are simply not the same guns that would otherwise have been used in crime. If you look at the people who are turning in firearms, they are consistently the least crime-prone [ed: least likely to commit crimes]: older people and women.”⁵

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info