Like many euphemisms, this has not much to do with reality. 99% of the guns never belonged to the government in the first place, so they can’t really be bought back. As Cecil points out, they have no effect, and may disarm the weak and vulnerable.
Welcome** SargeE7**. Local custom recommends a link to the column in question.
As I understand buybacks, it’s completely voluntary, and no “weak and vulnerable” will be disarmed against their will.
My ‘small town’ (pop 24,000) is doing a gun buyback, but not to reduce homicides (we didn’t have any)
The intent is to provide a means of gun disposal for people who have inherited guns from deceased family members, or gained unwanted possession by other means.
These people can’t easily and safely dispossess themselves of the guns; the very act of transporting them anywhere is illegal since they don’t have a license. Apparently there is some other reason (I don’t understand it) where they can’t just ask the police to come and get them.
Where do you live?
I’ve always wondered about the logic behind gun buybacks. Let’s say I’m a professional criminal, and I have some nice sleek guns I’ve paid upward of $1000 for. Maybe apiece. Am I really going to think: “Hmm, I can get a Target discount voucher for turning these in. Deal!”
I don’t think they’re expecting professional criminals to turn in their guns, but the average household that might not want a gun around anymore. One less gun in an average house means less chance it will be stolen during a burglary or be part of an accident or suicide. I have no idea if the idea is effective or not.
I remember once on David Letterman when Tony Randall, who was not a scheduled guest that night, “just happened” to be walking through the Letterman set. He was on his way to trade in his gun for a stuffed animal in the NYC buyback.
This is like an “alcohol buy back” for people who want to “get rid of” alcohol they have during Prohibition. 
Interesting that in the column Cecil uses the example of the national buy back scheme in Australia that was accompanied by making a whole class of weapons illegal to own and introducing uniform national gun laws.
He uses a few different metrics that vary between saying how effective (or not) the scheme was. One that that can be said though, we have not have a mass shooting since. On that score alone you have to say it was a success.
His line that the effectiveness of the Australian buyback is ‘disputed’ is about as true as saying Anthropogenic Climate Change is ‘disputed’ - it is, but only by those with a vested interest in saying so. The facts are that over the decade before the buyback we had an average of one mass killing a year with such guns. In the 18 years since, not a single one.
I was in favour of the buyback in Australian but I actually doubt the buyback is what has made the difference. I think if someone wanted to conduct a mass killing here they would find a gun. It’s just not that hard.
And it’s just a coincidence that it went from one a year to none in 18 years, exactly at that moment?
I think making broad categories of guns illegal had more effect than the buyback.
They sorta went hand in hand. Make broad categories illegal then have the buy back to get rid of the ones that were already in the community.
I’m deeply skeptical that any effort to remove guns from society will work unless most people don’t want guns anyway. If you tried it in the USA, instead of a Britain you’d get a Mexico- an unarmed helpless populace while criminals, revolutionaries and police of questionable integrity have all the guns they want. I’ll believe in disarmament when it’s proposed that most police go unarmed as well. If you complain that’s unrealistic, that’s my point.
Unrealistic here because the police, like most people really like having a gun and wearing it.
In Vic.Aus, the police were given guns again within my memory. An officer was killed while making a single-officer rural late-night traffic stop, and the police union took the opportunity to demand guns like they saw in American (but not British) TV shows.
There wasn’t much training offered, and the first effect was that a lot of police officers were killed in gun accidents. After a few years of that, more training was offered.
Unfortunately, they were trained to shoot people, using tactical response rules instead of community policing rules. The first effect of that was that they shot a lot of criminals. After a few years of that, the criminals started shooting back, and a lot of police were killed in retribution, and a few in “self defence”. After a few years of that, different training was offered, and officers were trained to avoid situations where they could get themselves killed.
We then had a period in which there was a fewer gun deaths, as was the original period before they were given guns. Unfortunately, the training program evolved into something more like the American and less like the British training. Officers are now trained to kill people if they feel threatened. So the trained response to a crazy person with a knife is to execute him.
Disarming the police here is unrealistic because (A) having armed police everywhere has normalized a gun culture, and (B) the police don’t want to be disarmed. On the other hand, I’m happy to propose and support the idea, because having armed police has been bad for the police and bad for the community, as the direct and indirect cause of many deaths, including notably many police officer deaths.
Save that it is not true. The Monash University shooting happened in 2002. 2 dead, 5 wounded. While technically not a mass shooting due to only 2 people dying, the intentions to kill more people was there.
^
The intention was there but not the result. Fair argument to say that if he had access to a semi automatic rifle instead of a bunch of handguns he would have killed more people.
Also, following that incident laws on handguns were further tightened and a lot of them were handed back in.
Even if that was counted - which, bizarrely, you acknowledge it shouldn’t be - 2 dead over 18 years contrasts rather strongly to to dozens in the ten years beforehand.
BTW here’s another stat: in the early 1990s about 600 Australians a year were dying by gunfire, now the number is more like 250. Most of the saved lives are suicides. And no, they have not been replaced by non-gun deaths, as overall homicide and suicide rates have fallen too.