Congressman Donald M. Payne Jr. (D-N.J.-10)
New Jersey Democratic Congressman Donald M. Payne Jr. [above] has recently reintroduced “The Safer Neighborhoods Gun Buyback Act”. Academics have routinely labeled such measures as ineffective at fighting crime. Perhaps the most famous of these is Alan Blinder of Freakonomics fame . . .

When it comes to gun buybacks, both the theory and the data could not be clearer in showing that they don’t work. The only guns that get turned in are ones that people put little value on anyway. There is no impact on crime. On the positive side, the “cash for clunkers” program is more attractive than the gun buyback program because, as long as they are being driven, old cars pollute, whereas old guns just sit there.

Reading this article at New Jersey TV online, I thought the Act was a new twist was being tried on this tired old scheme. Congressman Payne said that the program was aimed at the guns most used in crime, and that they were using ATF data to determine what the 10 guns most used in crime were. From njtvonline.org . . .

Payne: What it does is it allows the Department of Justice to secure a $360 million grant in order to buyback old guns, get guns off the street and incentivizw getting these guns back out of the hands of people that might not need to have them.

Williams: My impression from looking at gun buyback research is that very often it doesn’t work because the guns being brought back are great grandpa’s rifle that hasn’t been fired in 50 years. Are those the kind of guns you need to get off the streets?

Payne: No, actually we’ve identified through the ATF the 10 most used guns in street crimes. We have incentivized return of those guns by up to 25 percent over the market value of the gun. You would receive a debit card where once you turn in the gun. You get a debit card and that can be used for anything. You can’t get cash for it and you can’t use it to purchase guns. If they were tried to use in that manner there’s a possibility of a two year jail sentence, and that goes along with using it illegally. So, 25 percent over the retail cost of the gun and we think that is a great incentive in order to bring them back.

This was interesting information. I was curious as to what guns the ATF had determined were the 10 most used in crime, so I read the actual bill to find out. I worried about having to trudge through dozens or hundreds of pages of legalese to worry out the facts; but such was not the case. The bill is a bit more than a page long.

I could not find anything in the bill about any particular model of gun, other than the ATF is supposed to publish the “market value” of gun models so that the people that are buying the guns to be turned in to be destroyed, will know how to calculate the 125 percent of market value they are to pay people who turn in the guns.

The bill has little or no chance of passing in a Republican controlled House, and it is the epitome of irresponsible legislation.  Paying 125 percent of “market value” for an item is a quick way to go bankrupt. It simply means that people would bring every gun that they did not have an emotional attachment to, and make a quick 25 percent profit, then buy more new.

Arizona had a similar program for alternative fuel vehicles. In some cases, the State paid more than half the cost of the vehicle.  It almost bankrupted the State before it was halted.

I do not know why Congressman Payne felt compelled to prevaricate about the guns being affected by this bill. Maybe he wasn’t worried because he knew it has no chance of passage, at least at present.

It is unlikely that the error will cost him anything. Donald M. Payne, Jr. inherited the majority minority district in 2012 from his father, Donald M. Payne. He was was elected, in November of 2012 after his father’s death in March of 2012. It is a very safe Democrat seat, in one of the most anti-Second Amendment states in the nation.

©2015 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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33 COMMENTS

  2. “It simply means that people would bring every gun that they did not have an emotional attachment to, and make a quick 25 percent profit, then buy more new.”

    Hell, it means more than that! It means people would buy up any used gun they could find – at their LGS, gunbroker, armslist, wherever – and sell them to you and me taxpayer for double what they paid.

    Those debit cards would then be used to stock up on ammo. Or groceries or whatever.

    • It would just up the cost of guns, both new and used. People would use the card to pay off their credit card, which would be used to buy more guns and ammo.

  3. Maybe the necessary language is in there, but you have to pass the bill to know what’s in the bill. 🙂

  4. “You would receive a debit card where once you turn in the gun. You get a debit card and that can be used for anything. You can’t get cash for it and you can’t use it to purchase guns.”

    Use the debit card to buy groceries.

    Use the cash you usually use to buy groceries to buy new guns.

    Q.E.D.

    Do we need to do *all* the critical thinking here?

    Geeze.

  5. You all are missing the pearl.

    “What it does is it allows the Department of Justice to secure a $360 million grant”.

    This is what bareback (can’t get RF’s homo’s & guns article out if my mind) err…buybacks are about. Anyone want to bet that monies received for buybacks is funneled to LEO overtime?

    • “(can’t get RF’s homo’s & guns article out if my mind)”

      Feeling conflicted, perhaps?

      It’s perfectly OK to finally ‘come out of the closet’… 🙂

    • These little boosts to officer overtime pay can cost us even more than that.

      Many public employee union contracts set retirement pay as a percentage of the average of the three highest years annual pay among the five years preceding retirement. Many officers will boost that pay any way they can in those three years, thus bumping up their annual retirement pay for decades thereafter.

      • Another neat little trick is the payout on their unused sick days.

        Some contracts call for allowing employees to ‘bank’ their annual un-used sick days and then cash them out at their pay rate at the time of their retirement.

        I’ve seen retirement payouts for those sick days in the high tens of thousands of dollars in the local paper here.

  7. In addition to being a congressman, Mr. Payne has also been cast to play Cleveland in the upcoming live-action “Family Guy” movie.

    • “…Mr. Payne has also been cast to play Cleveland in the upcoming live-action “Family Guy” movie.”

      Any word on who’s been cast to play Brian? (the genius talking family dog)

      • Bill Mahr. He shares Brian’s political view, love of drugs and booze, and he even looks like him.

  9. What kind of debit card has restrictions on the goods it can purchase?

    How do they know if “Walmart” sold you groceries or guns?

    • Only restricted debit cards I’ve heard of were those distributed by FEMA after Katrina, Rita and Ike. Individual merchants are coded by their type of business. Grocery stores are a certain code. Department stores are another. Entire categories of merchant can be denied processing of these debit cards. They’re supposed to be for humanitarian relief, so you shouldn’t be able to use them at, say, Victoria’s Secret.

      Barring transactions at the product level can be trickier and depends on the sophistication of the retailer’s system. For example, companies often provide certain employees with a company credit card. If you’re in sales or an executive, it likely won’t have restrictions, other than a credit limit. If you’re a driver, it likely is restricted only to fuel stations and repair stations.

      At a basic gas station, it can be restricted to just gas, while all inside merchandise is barred. The system won’t approve the transaction for beer, for example. Depends on the systems involved, though. An old style cash register system wouldn’t prevent it. It’d have to be caught after the fact by someone in accounting poring over expense account receipts.

      Walmart has perhaps the most advanced supply chain and point of sale system in the world. They have the technology to pinpoint purchases.

  12. I have a better idea to get guns off streets: institute a stop and frisk policy. Have police stop suspicious people they know are gang members and frisk them for weapons or drugs. Video tape the entirety of the searches show no one is accused of planting stuff.

  13. Curiosity has me risking getting hit with the “Flame Deleted” hammer……

    What is wrong with that man’s head? Is his head that big or is his face that small? Is it a medical condition and does anyone know what it might be called so I can look it up?

  14. What an ignorant fascist fuck. How is he going to dictate how recipients spend their money and how would buying a Constitutionally-guaranteed weapon of defense with those funds be turned into a criminal offense?

    “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
    Harlan Ellison

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