This Weekend: Sell Your Guns, Hang With Grandmas
A brand-new Glock 30, the “handgun of choice for plainclothes officers and security personnel” with “excellent out-of-box precision,” ergonomic frame, and the “big bore power” of the .45 in a more compact size, costs $649 at Bass Pro Shops. And this Saturday, August 27, the NYPD will buy it from you for $200 at a church in Flatbush.
Obviously, a gun like this might cost much less around the corner from Bass Pro Shops, or in anything other than an over-the-counter experience, but that doesn’t really matter to the NYPD; the goal of their gun buyback program (Cash For Guns), which has been operating for years, is just to get guns off the streets. This is definitely not the most lucrative way to sell your Glock; and NYPD Deputy Commissioner Susan Herman has dubbed these events as pointless.
“It has minimal impact,” she told the Observer. “Most of the guns that we’ve been able to recover are guns that are owned by grandmothers and great-grandmothers; they hide them under their beds.”
In 2010, the NYPD bought 2,000 total guns, but in 2015, that number dropped to 88. Despite criticism, the program continues because—of course—any gun returned to the NYPD, even if it was getting dusty under your grandma’s daybed, is one more gun that won’t be used in a violent crime.
The Saturday buyback event is hosted by the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson (the money comes from them, too), and it’s a no-questions-asked, no-ID situation. “[Saturday] is one component of our efforts to rid Brooklyn’s streets of illegal firearms,” Thompson told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
Deputy Commissioner Herman recommends a more targeted program that would involve outreach to the mothers and grandmothers turning in the weapons—her goal is to make a bigger impact here in the city. Most of the people who attend buyback events are actually from out of town, she says. “They’re often people from other states coming to give us—Pennsylvania, New Jersey people—coming into New York to sell their guns. That’s a good thing, it’s good for America to get more guns off the street. It doesn’t particularly reap a lot of benefits here in New York.”
Not a bad idea for a Saturday hang, actually. Bring your “revolvers, semiautomatic and automatic pistols, sawed-off shotguns, or assault weapons that are in apparent operative condition” to the Clarendon Road Church in a brown paper bag this Saturday, and chat it up with some New Jersey grandmothers.