The Volokh Conspiracy

Occasionally your argument is correct, Goober. In my view, it's more often the case that no single party in a dispute is wholly correct, especially when it comes to politics.

The best kind of journalism attempts to provide an in-depth look at all sides to a question and then comes to its own verdict (if it's an opinion piece) or allows the reader to do so (if it's a news piece).

I don't know of anyone who thinks that gun buybacks aren't worthwhile. Everyone has some broken firearm that they got at a yard sale, isn't worth the cost of repair, and for which no buyer would pay fifty dollars. Gun buybacks are a natural solution to the problem. It's a little like car dealers who offer $500 trade-in on any vehicle that can make it to their lot.

Sasha,

I think you missed Dave Hardy's <satire> tags or something.

Total waste of taxpayers money. But hey there are no poor people in DC so there is money to waste. I do not know of any study that shows gun buy backs decrease crime. I believe they do these to make the public think they are doing something to reduce crime. And to make the public see firearms as bad. And to make the public feel good that the govenment will not just take your firearms but at this time will let you stupidly volunteer to turn it in at so called fair market value. And the comment that granny turning in her late husbands firearms is taking guns off the street is pure BS. Alot of times granny may be getting ripped off as the firearms may be worth alot of money. Maybe some get kept and resold. Who would know????????? If there is the will there is a way. And yes alot of people get 50.00 for a firearm not worth 5.00. I do not see how a policeperson can do these scams with a straight face.

I expressly stressed, in the second sentence of my post, that "Even the Boston Globe, hardly an NRA sympathizer, criticizes such buybacks — there's obviously a serious question whether they're worthwhile." If there was no serious question whether buybacks are worthwhile, the matter would be different;

You're citing criticism from one newspaper (Boston Globe) to be evidence of a "serious question".

Why do you not cite the lack of criticism in the Washington Post to be evidence that there is, in fact, not a "serious question"?

How have you determined which newspaper is correct? Just seemed odd to me to hold the two newspapers to different standards.

"therut" got it right:

"I believe they do these to make the public think they are doing something to reduce crime. And to make the public see firearms as bad."

Rather than address the root causes of crime, and a central role government has in perpetuating conditions that encourage crime, media lapdogs attack guns (which they hate), gun owners (whom they view as fools or worse), and the RKBA, which many would destroy if they could (a goal they pursue constantly, as in this tale).

For one thing, you can't buy back something you never owned, the program is fraudulent from the start. No constitutional authority exists to spend the public treasury on disarming the public.

Next, there are no guns "on the street," this is just a scare phrase used by authorities to terrorize the public.

Then, euphemistic buyback programs never convince real criminals to turn in their guns for safety or otherwise, unless --

You consider that nearly anyone turning in a gun has carried it illegally through D.C., transferred it to the police illegally and without paperwork (no questions asked), using the so-called "gun-show loophole" to operate the scam, and the police are gladly violating the law and tolerating, no, encouraging, the public to violate the law too.

In Arizona, savvy gun owners used to set up a table outside gun buybacks and pay good prices for worthwhile merchandise that comes by. Recognizing this unintended consequence (perfectly legal here), and the utter hopeless feel-good waste the programs are, they don't run them anymore. Shucks.

The Post keeps up its long-standing tradition of villifying guns and presenting no decent value to these vital exemplars of freedom. Guns are so bad, in their view (and in this heinous example of corrupt journalism), that anything that gets them from the public to the authorities is a public good.

Eugene's point about balance, required by every code of ethics in the trade, is completely ignored if the subject is guns, because, well, what possible balance could there be for the evil world of guns?!

The idea that one of these guns might ever save a life or stop a crime never enters their consciousness.

I did an interview with a reporter yesterday (Tucson Daily Star), which I always see as an opportunity to educate the hopelessly ignorant and misinformed. When I pointed out that the whole CCW program regulates only the innocent, and that criminals are not included in any way, at great expense and perhaps poorly allocating limited resources, she said, "Wow. I never thought of it that way."

Made my day. The Post, if this story is any gauge, is beyond hope.

Alan.

Again, I don't think it's applicable in this particular case. But I'm instinctively suspicious of this line of complaint, that journalists ought to have considered the other side of the debate---as a general matter, it's a principle that leads to a lot of shoddy journalism.

The problem is (besides the fact that Eugene didn't express that principle) that the alternate principle isn't particularly workable. It requires that journalists be able to distinguish between legitimate positions and illegitimate ones. But they don't necessarily have the knowledge or training to do that. (I'm being optimistic; they almost certainly don't.) And even if they did, do we really want to establish as a journalistic principle that journalists should only print the orthodox view on subjects?