Gun Buybacks Receive Mostly Air Guns, Officials Still Ridiculously Happy

How many times have you held a BB or pellet gun and silently gloried in the vast power contained in your trembling hands? Okay, maybe once or twice as a prepubescent child. But we now have gun confiscating authorities doing that very thing after running a gun buyback program in New Bedford, Massachusetts which netted more than 50% non-lethal BB and pellet guns.

The buyback program was run in a local church and gave groceries in return for the weapons. It took in over 40 items including 18 real firearms and a couple dozen BB and pellet guns.

New Bedford police chief, Joseph Cordeiro told reporters, “I’m always concerned about the BB and pellet guns because they look so realistic. Many times guns of this type are used in robberies, so it’s good to get them off the street.” 

It’s pretty hard to imagine setting out to do anything at all and being satisfied with more than 50% fake results. It would be like going hunting for lions and accidentally killing a kitten. It would be like going car shopping and coming home with a Hotwheel, or setting out to the local single’s bar looking to meet someone and coming home alone with an armful of pornography.

Now, we understand that Massachusetts is a pretty tame part of the country. Crimes rates there are exceedingly low (outside of Boston). It could be that even a thing resembling a gun could cause a chill of dread to run up the spine of the average Massachusetts state citizen… but this is the police chief. This is a man who should be well beyond the novelty of toy guns.

We can learn a few things from the results of this local buyback. We can take it for what it is: that there are at least 20 people who are desperate enough for food that they will jump at any opportunity to trade in their personal belongings for some groceries.

We can also infer that as many as 18 people don’t seem to understand that a real firearm can bring in way more than a one-time score at the local grocer.

It’s called hunting Massachusians, we’d have thought you would have heard about it.

Of course, it is somewhat reassuring that there’s a slightly smaller chance that some local kid will be running around with a real-looking fake gun and get into real trouble over it. We have all heard stories about myopic cops who have shot children who were holding toy guns. But if we’re honest, incidents like those are exceedingly rare.

No, we think the most likely motivation behind this declaration of victory is more about just checking the “success” box on a job that was a colossal waste of time. Any time the government does anything, it costs the people money. So, if the police chief said he had his pinstripes in a twist over getting a bunch of toy guns, people might wonder why doing such a thing in such a tame part of the country ever crossed his mind in the first place.