The city of Sarasota, Florida, has around 55,000 people in it. Sarasota County, though, has about 480,000 people. That’s a lot of folks, but even in Sarasota itself, it’s not exactly Tiny Town, USA. And, as it’s in Florida, there are probably a whole lot of guns floating around town, both legal and not so legal.
But never fear, Sarasota just had a gun “buyback,” where they bought back things the government never owned in the first place. The goal of such events, as always, is to reduce the number of guns that criminals might gain access to.
And did this one make a dent? Not in the least.
The Sarasota Police Department hosted its annual “Done with the Gun” firearm turn-in event Saturday, providing an anonymous way to safely dispose of unwanted firearms.
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Police said that 12 firearms were turned in this year.
Police accepted a variety of items, including non-working firearms, antique firearms, replica firearms, pellet guns and BB guns.
What they got was a double-barrel shotgun, a break-action shotgun, a bolt-action .22 rifle, an air rifle, five revolvers–including one that didn’t even seem to have a grip on it–and three semi-auto handguns.
Of these firearms, the semi-autos and a couple of the revolvers, which were snub-noses, might be useful to a modern criminal.
That’s it. That’s the potential impact, and since I’m pretty sure these were all from lawful owners who just didn’t want them anymore for whatever reason, there will be zero impact on crime.
Then again, that’s true of buybacks as a whole. The research, which routinely seems to find a convoluted way to advance the anti-gun narrative, has come right out and proven time and time again that buybacks don’t reduce crime. The only example that a study has ever suggested otherwise was one where the buyback was held in conjunction with other efforts, but the researchers made no effort to see if it was the buyback itself or the other efforts that made a difference.