DPD's gun "buy-back" program was a failure before it even started. The basic premise behind this scheme is false. The police want you to believe that if it buys back guns it never owned in the first place that the city of Detroit will be safer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Gun buy-back programs do not affect crime rates. Accordingly, the violent crime that Detroiters witness daily will continue.
Gun buy-back programs only serve one purpose: it shows that the police are doing something. It doesn't matter that the program will not change things. It is more politically effective to show citizens that the police are hard at work getting guns off the street. It just might make citizens forget that the Interim DPD Chief was allegedly involved in scandal with one of his subordinates.
Interim DPD Chief Ralph Godbee was quoted as saying the following, "Every gun turned in will be destroyed and is one less gun that is stolen during a home invasion." Apparently, it never dawned on him that those very same guns could be used for self-defense to shoot home-invaders, especially since DPD's officially published response time of 28 minutes is woefully inadequate.
Further, gun buy-back programs send an erroneous message to the general public. Detroit's crime problem is not caused by guns; crime is caused by criminals. A firearm is only a tool. Obviously, a firearm in the possession of a criminal is a bad thing. However, a gun in the hands of a law-abiding citizen is a threat to no one other than criminals.
It is pure folly to suggest or to imply that any criminals turned in their firearms during the buy-back program. Regretably, many "gun widows" and some misinformed citizens were the only folks turning in their guns. Thus, the city of Detroit was made less safe. There are now fewer firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves.
Violent crime has been a persistent problem in Detroit for a long time. It requires real solutions that will foster better relationships between the community with police officers who to a large extent do not reside in the city, will not put citizens on hold when they call 9-1-1, and will decrease the woefully inadequate response time for the police to arrive.
We do not need ineffective programs that do not change anything. Perhaps the only sillier crime fighting tactic that was recently deployed in Detroit was ex-DPD Chief Evans' program of towing cars of drivers with suspended Operators Licenses. Someone had told him that thirty percent of drive-by shooting were done by criminals who were driving illegally. On the very first day of that program a drive-by shooting occurred in the city.
Finally, the biggest travesty of this gun buy-back scheme was that the program reportedly paid a person $50 for a Civil War era revolver. If you believe that gun was destroyed, I have some prime real estate in the Florida Everglades to sell you.
I do most of my blogging and article writing in coffee shops because there are too many distractions at home.
1 comment:
Come on, Rick. I think any reasonable person can expect that violent crimes and gun offenses will drop off precipitously after this weekend's buy-back. I think we ought to give the DPD, Second Ebenezer, and Continental Management credit for making Detroit safer.
-rimshot-
But seriously, I saw some footage of the trash cans full of long guns that were (allegedly) due to be destroyed and just about cried, thinking about all the low-income people out there who need a means of defending themselves. If they wanted to cut down on crime (rather then "guns on the street"), the DPD would be redistributing the reliable firearms to responsible citizens along with ammo and training.
Hey, if the hoplophobes don't like my plan, maybe they will approve of sending collected guns out of the county. There's plenty of places where the the poor desperately need a means of defense.
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