By Kevin Sona and Lee Williams
When the Miami Police Department’s “GUNS 4 UKRAINE” gun buyback first began Saturday morning, the public and members of the pro-gun media were allowed to stand next to three tents where the transactions were taking place.
However, when it became obvious that turnout was poor and the event was fizzling, police started pushing onlookers back farther and farther away – a total of eight times. Eventually, the public was moved more than 150 yards away from the tents.
In addition, Miami Police positioned vehicles and bicycle officers to block the public’s view of the buyback.
“They said they were pushing us back for our safety and for officer safety,” said Kevin Sona, a Florida Carry, Inc. director who covered the event for the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. “The only unsafe act I saw were the cops who were muzzling themselves and other people.”
To be clear, Sona and a few other onlookers were on a public sidewalk near the public parking lot of Miami City Hall. They never strayed onto any private property or into any restricted areas.
“They must have moved us away 8-10 times,” Sona said. “We’d see them with a roll of crime scene tape and we knew we were getting pushed back, again.”
What were Miami Police trying to hide?
“In my opinion, they pushed us back because they didn’t want us to document the failure of this event,” Sona said.
Shipping guns to Ukraine is illegal
A story published last week revealed how the department first created the gun buyback, which they called “GUNS 4 UKRAINE.” Miami Police spokeswoman Officer Kenia Fallat confirmed that the weapons collected at the buyback would be shipped to the Ukraine for use in their ongoing war against the Russian military.
However, shipping firearms to a foreign country without proper export license violates federal law, specifically the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, known as ITAR. In a written statement provided as a response to this story, Miami officials admitted they do not have any export paperwork.
Shipping guns to the Ukraine also violates Florida Statute 790.08, which regulates what police can do with firearms or other weapons that come under their control.
Basically, they can use the weapons, loan them to another law enforcement agency, destroy them or sell them, but the statute requires them to deposit all money raised from the sale into the state treasury earmarked for the benefit of the State School Fund. The state statute does not allow them to ship the arms to a foreign military.
Officer Fallat attended the event. She told Sona she believes the department threw her “under the bus” because she wasn’t “fully briefed” about the export restrictions, which she said was a “major disservice.”
Asked Saturday how the public would likely react when they learned the guns would not be shipped to the Ukraine, Officer Fallat said “the city was kind of taking advantage, and they’re not telling the truth.
No battleworthy weapons
Sona stayed at City Hall throughout the event. He estimates 10-15 guns total were bought-back by police. Most were old single-shot or bolt-action rifles and shotguns. There were a few homemade firearms.
To be clear, no ARs or AKs were seen. However, Miami Police would later claim they recovered more than 60 firearms, and they released a photo of an officer with an AK on their social media.
“In my opinion, this was 100-percent staged,” Sona said. “They got about a dozen guns, maybe, and we did not see a single modern sporting rifle – not one AK or AR.”
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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.
Hey! Those pictured firearms are REALLY Ghost Guns. 0% receiver… Looks like ATF needs to ban “ingenuity” first.
they just used the Ukranian connection to hype what ultimately was a failed event…
How odd… this is suppose to be ‘Guns 4 Ukraine Gun BuyBack’ …. aside from the incorrect term ‘BuyBack’ because they can’t buy back something they never owned to begin with
If we take a look at one of their Twitter posts here > https://twitter.com/MiamiPD/status/1538178428913975307
we see the real reason in their own statement
“HAPPENING NOW! Guns 4 Ukraine Gun BuyBack is happening now until 2pm. Help us spread the word and get guns off our streets. ”
The real reason is “get guns off our streets” – in other words, deceptive practices with the declared “Guns 4 Ukraine Gun BuyBack” excuse. These guns were never, as I stated before, going to be ‘4 Ukraine’ which is why they didn’t bother with getting a license or making other arrangements to ship them and explains the non-answers to question from them in the previous articles (e.g. https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/criminal-enterprise-saturdays-miami-guns-4-ukraine-buyback-will-break-state-and-federal-firearm-laws/) about them not having the means and license to ship them. It was all one big lie, and like I said before all of them are going to be destroyed and not a one will ever go to Ukraine.
Its nice to see though that the number of guns owners duped by this deception were very few, not even enough to call the ‘metaphorical’ “hand full”.
“High powered rifle: .223, AR15, AK47.”
Drink the Kool-Aid much?
Only the AK would qualify there, and only by a little bit.
Just like with “high capacity magazine” the problem is that nobody describes a .22LR or similar as a “low power rifle.” It seems that 5-10 shot mags are rarely described as “low capacity magazines.” And by the same stripe, it presumes that there are not rifles with much higher power cartridges, or magazines that have multiple times more capacity.
“Standard power/capacity” would be a better term, but it doesn’t fit THE MESSAGE any better than Modern Sporting Rifle does in place of “assault rifle.”
How many cops turned in guns? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
“If a ‘bought-back’ zip gun kills only one Russian…the whole effort was worth it” *
*fictitious(?) quote from Karine Jean-Pierre, current Liar-in-Chief for the White House.
Bravo! I tip my hat to you fine sir.
I never thought I’d say this… I kinda miss Raggedy Ann, she could produce an “explain-slation” faster than a leaky honeywagon.
““If a ‘bought-back’ zip gun kills only one Russian…the whole effort was worth it” *”
A single-shot zip gun can be used by a Ukrainian to get that soldiers AK.
And be used to kill a whole lot more Russian Scum ™… 🙂
This is the type of shit that needs to be shared on reddit and a bunch of leftist sites.
“Look guys we are taking steps here! It’s working”
*posts a pic of what they bought back
“Yea, I admit, this was a fucking waste of time”
The zip gunm is only used to trade up to a “uber high capacity, full auto, assault weapon of war” or something.
The zip gun is only used to trade up to a “uber high capacity, full auto, assault weapon of war” or something.
“Eventually, the public was moved more than 150 yards away from the tents.”
Miami P.D. did this solely for the safety of the public at large, those “assault weapons” are killing machines not to mention the 9mm’s that can “blow lungs out.”
Its a good thing they moved those people away so they couldn’t see the guns too well. Everyone knows a zip gun is the ultimate power in the universe and can lay waste to the universe if you simply look at one. Tragedy averted.
I can see the headline now. “Ivan Ghosted by Ghost Gunm”
I can see the headline now. “Ivan Ghosted by Ghost Gun”
Careful Mas Cool Arrow with that gunm stuff, you might wind up in the gunm shop asking to see a certain gunm and the gunmshop guy will give you a weird look.
Specially when you say, ” Wow that’s a nice weaponm.”
If you take everones guns away, all that your going to do is put people in the position of fashioning their own. I think the left either thinks or wants everyone tho think they think that they can create a law that will stop all that. Well, no ya wont. You can try but any effort will just make things worse.
So much for “Russia totes defeated”.
Have fun storming the castle, boys.
To answer the question posed in the headline of this article … none.
It’s obvious they didn’t even think about whether it was illegal to ship weapons to Ukraine. They were just trying to get in on the zeitgeist to see if they would get a good response.
The fact that they didn’t look up the relevant laws says a lot about the competence level of the Miami PD. In fact, all of our institutions are now run by ill-educated, stupid wannabes, from the White House on down to dog-catcher.
At least maybe the dog catcher will get bit.
Some of the other ones should get rabies though.
Is rabies a synonym for______________!
🤣
Was hoping at least a gb-22 would make it.
That handgun pic. 🤣
It seems like Mister Geppetto is now residing in Miami, and may have a beef to settle. 🤔
Best place on earth to sell stolen guns!
Technically in some neighborhoods it would be a better idea to “buy back” baseball bats.
Zero
As a swampy local here in SoFlo, tue local bubble gum news made a quick snippet. A PO PO coordinator stated around 70 firearms. $50 to $150 depending… ” we received automatic and fully automatic weapons ” whatever those are. And showed one officer lifting some AR that had Magpul furniture and was entirely to nice for $150 gift card. Staged BS. Not one beat up or broken POS will get to Ukraine.
Overall these events are not successful to get the guns these event backers want to see because even the most stupid of people understand that it is not to their advantage to sell their personal property, for example, MSR rifle to one of these events for say, for example, a $100.00 gift card when they can get a lot more for it if they wanted to sell it. So these events end up with mostly a few things of little value or junk or from some who were duped into drinking the kool-aid.
So if we just pretended that collecting unwanted guns “off the street” and sending them to Ukraine to be used to fight Russia was a legal endeavor, wouldn’t that seem like an awfully good reason to continue to support civilian gun ownership at home? Why would you ever want to rely on the citizens of another country to send you their cast offs of any kind of critical supplies after you’ve been invaded?
I am really looking forward to a “buyback” in my city. See, I am poor, and there’s a big-box hardware store a couple blocks away. I can get enough material for ten or so zippies. At what, 100 apiece? I could buy a case of some of that Lake City I keep hearing about.
Recently read an article that the goobermint is going to stop selling Lake City ammo to the civilian market. They need to hoard it for the next war coming soon to an area near you. Actually Two-Shot doesn’t want folks going around blowing heads off, so that’s why they are not going to sell it to the civilian market. I wonder if the DCM got the memo?
Modern technology has certainly improved zip guns. That zip gun in the picture is a lot more sophisticated than the ones we made when I was in late grade school or early high school. Too far back to remember clearly. Ours were just a piece of 1×2 which actually was 1″x2″, it was that long ago, with a piece of car antenna for the barrel and a barrel lock for the firing pin and, of course, the ubiquitous rubber bands. It was actually semi-automatic because the case was ejected when it blew the barrel lock back. Always fired with arms fully extended. And Robbie’s Mom thought he was going to shoot his eye out with a BB gun.
Regretfully, the following question seemingly comes ever more appropriate. Whose side are the police on?
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