...and deputies have seized about 75 guns in the first 90 minutes.

Seized. Is that what it's called when people voluntarily hand them over?

I'm not a gun-nut, I believe in reasonable gun control.

With that said, what is the point of this program? The guns I want off the street are the stolen guns, the guns belonging to felons, the guns used in crimes. Which sense amnesty is not being given will not be turned in with this program. I don't see the point in trying to collect guns from law-abiding gun owners in exchange for a small fee. Hell, they could get more at a pawn shop for most of the guns.

...cold dead hands, and so on and so forth...

/They'd have to find 'em first.
//Good luck with that.

slackin_off: I'm not a gun-nut, I believe in reasonable gun control.

With that said, what is the point of this program? The guns I want off the street are the stolen guns, the guns belonging to felons, the guns used in crimes. Which sense amnesty is not being given will not be turned in with this program. I don't see the point in trying to collect guns from law-abiding gun owners in exchange for a small fee. Hell, they could get more at a pawn shop for most of the guns.

Honestly? I think the only real reason for programs like this is PR. Whoever's running the program can point to it and say, "Look, see, we're working to reduce crime. This program removed x number of guns from the street!" It's stupid, but I'll bet you anything that most people who see the inevitable story about it on the evening news believe it's actually helping to reduce violent crime.

What a stupid program. 100 dollars for a handgun is not only a ripoff for most handgun owners, but where is this money coming from?

Just for the sake of argument, say 75 guns is all they got all day and all guns were rifles or shotguns. That's 3,750 dollars of (probably) taxpayer money.

And I'd say they got mostly handguns because of the higher price...

What a ridiculous waste, if I was a citizen of South Carolina I'd be pissed

YOU CAN HAVE MY GUN WHEN YOU PRY IT OUT.......


OOOoooo.. Looky, roses!

\ :-)

Nice headline Subby

+1

He said there is no amnesty for the gun owners. The weapons are checked to see if they are stolen and ballistics test will also be done.


These are not the guns you seek. I agree. They should be scooping up ANY guns.... the point is to get more guns off the streets. Especially the stolen ones.

It had better be a crappy handgun for just a single rose and a gift card. Sell them to me instead. I'll give you a "Hey, thanks" publicly on Fark... AND send you a really nice thank you card (with glitter and stuff).

Thirty-two Waffle Houses, mostly in the South, will be spruced up with white table clothes, candlelight and romantic music playing in the background. Pink signs invite customers to "get scattered, smothered and covered" in romance.


That sounds illegal.

Just use the guns they turn in to shoot Axel and we all win.

Yeah, but did the police show up at the scheduled time or make everybody wait?

Dumb. Especially with no amnesty, the only thing that this is doing is giving wives who are disapproving of their husbands' firearms the opportunity to get rid of 'em. :P

labman: Just use the guns they turn in to shoot Axel and we all win.

Pffft. With the cost of ammo these days, it's not worth it. Just bash him over the head with a mic stand or something.

tukatz: Thirty-two Waffle Houses, mostly in the South, will be spruced up with white table clothes, candlelight and romantic music playing in the background. Pink signs invite customers to "get scattered, smothered and covered" in romance.


That sounds illegal.

Probably is down South.

But, oh, so much fun.

An empty meaningless feel good gesture. Sounds like someone is up for re-election.

stevarooni: Dumb. Especially with no amnesty, the only thing that this is doing is giving wives who are disapproving of their husbands' firearms the opportunity to get rid of 'em. :P

As opposed to the amnesty programs, where criminals give the guns to the police, who then make them completely useless as evidence "Oh, here's a ballistics match, who did you get this from? We want to talk to them regarding several crimes". "Um, yeah, that's the thing see, we didn't get their name...is that bad?"

Gun buybacks are feel-good at best, and a way for criminals to safely dispose of incriminating evidence in all reality. Anyone who feels that "taking guns off the street" in any way decreases the ability of a criminal to illegally get guns, is naiive.

So much better to find some way to keep the criminals off the street. Maybe some sort of big secure building to keep them in or something.

tukatz: Thirty-two Waffle Houses, mostly in the South, will be spruced up with white table clothes, candlelight and romantic music playing in the background. Pink signs invite customers to "get scattered, smothered and covered" in romance.

Kinkyyyy. Sign here.

One Waffle House restaurant north of Atlanta decided last year to make the Valentine's Day conversion and it was a big hit. Waffle House spokeswoman Kelly Thrasher says one couple decided to drive hundreds of miles from Tennessee to be there.

That's pretty damn sad.

slackin_off: With that said, what is the point of this program?

It's a feel good measure that doesn't really do anything to reduce levels of violence.

Just like the 20,000ish gun laws and regulations we've already got in this country.

"I got the shotgun blues, Shotgun blues, I said I don't know what I did, But I know I gotta move."

/meh.

Maybe local gun stores should do "gun buyback programs". Offer a giftcard for your unwanted firearm at much less than its worth. Clean it up, sell it as used. Profit!

Gun crimes down - Slashings up

jcsturgeon: What a ridiculous waste, if I was a citizen of South Carolina I'd be pissed

Oh trust me, there are many other reasons to be irritated in South Carolina. I went to college there. If it can be helped, I won't even fly over it. The added bonus of living in South Carolina? Each time it makes national news, a collective, national facepalm ensues. It's like the 'wave' at a football game, only instead of being united in support of a team, the nation is drawn together by the skull-scorching Stupid that finds a way to replenish itself every week over there.

You know it's bad when a guy from Louisiana makes fun of your state.

dude, there's already song called that. it like your just copying it from them

Huh. I live in SC and heard about this on NPR a couple days ago; didn't really pay much attention nor have I been seeing it get much publicity here.

Stay Cool Babylon: "Oh trust me, there are many other reasons to be irritated in South Carolina. I went to college there."

Don't worry, man, I'm sure a LOT of people were irritated in SC while you were attending college here.

...Har har. Jk.

This is the same state that spawned attention-whoring asshat Leon Lott. At least they're not arresting 8 people for every gun they see a picture of.

In related news, gun theft up 100%.

At a Columbia church, five cars lined up to give away guns before the exchange had even started. At the end of the day, Columbia area police had collected 191 weapons and police in Sumter collected 32.
Click Here!

"We've got a great turnout so far," Richland County sheriff's spokesman Lt. Chris Cowan said.

A handgun was worth a $100 gift card, while a rifle or shotgun netted a $50 gift certificate. Cowan said one man turned in six handguns, worth $600 in gift cards.
Cowan did not immediately have a total value for gift cards given out. Sumter Police Chief Patty Patterson said her program gave out $550 in gift cards for long guns and $2,100 for handguns.
There was no amnesty for those turning in the guns. The weapons were being checked to see if they were stolen, names and addresses were jotted down and ballistics tests would also be done to see if the firearm was used in a crime.

slackin_off: I'm not a gun-nut, I believe in reasonable gun control.

Thanks for your opinion on gun control. I'll just take it as your opinion on MY trustworthiness.
I bet you never wanted something YOU own banned, just some control over your neighbors and the scary poor people, right?

L. Neil Smith (pops to full opinion piece)
If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash-for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything-without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude-toward your ownership and use of weapons-conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

If he doesn't want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?

If he makes excuses about obeying a law he's sworn to uphold and defend-the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights-do you want to entrust him with anything?

If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if he calls you names only he thinks are evil-like "Constitutionalist"-when you insist that he account for himself, hasn't he betrayed his oath, isn't he unfit to hold office, and doesn't he really belong in jail?

Sure, these are all leading questions. They're the questions that led me to the issue of guns and gun ownership as the clearest and most unmistakable demonstration of what any given politician-or political philosophy-is really made of.

He may lecture you about the dangerous weirdos out there who shouldn't have a gun-but what does that have to do with you? Why in the name of John Moses Browning should you be made to suffer for the misdeeds of others? Didn't you lay aside the infantile notion of group punishment when you left public school-or the military? Isn't it an essentially European notion, anyway-Prussian, maybe-and certainly not what America was supposed to be all about?

And if there are dangerous weirdos out there, does it make sense to deprive you of the means of protecting yourself from them? Forget about those other people, those dangerous weirdos, this is about you, and it has been, all along.

Try it yourself: if a politician won't trust you, why should you trust him? If he's a man-and you're not-what does his lack of trust tell you about his real attitude toward women? If "he" happens to be a woman, what makes her so perverse that she's eager to render her fellow women helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun she doesn't want you to have?

On the other hand-or the other party-should you believe anything politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after another with other countries?

Makes voting simpler, doesn't it? You don't have to study every issue-health care, international trade-all you have to do is use this X-ray machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why they hate it.

Oh, and I forgot to ask what happens to the antiques and museum pieces that get turned in?
Do they go for testing and destruction, or do they go into someone's pocket for resale/hoarding?

Too many* of the firearms netted by these buy-backs are wonderful works of engineering, and sometimes even art. Either they get destroyed, which is a shame ... or they are stolen (from the very program designed to reduce the number of stolen guns on the streets) and sold off or stashed.

*(by no means a majority, but it happens, mostly grand-kids/widows cleaning out attics)