Junk Guns: Junk Policy

Turk has an item on the latest Sodom-on-Lake Michigan area gun-buyback. The gist is that taxpayers spent their money on about 200 non-working junkers with about the same crime potential as black board eraser.

Most of what the pictures show are unidentifiable long guns, and I doubt many are worth the $75 public bounty as potential working weapons.

But there's another element here. Just suppose one of them is a clapped out Winchester 74. Firing pin price-- $30. Magazine tube assembly about the same. Sights about ten bucks each. Or suppose a Remington 514, stock value at least $40. Et cetera.

And do you suppose there was anyone at the church there glancing at the stuff as it came in to check for old Redfield receiver sights? Marble screw-ons? Tang sights?

It is a sort of cash-for-clunkers disaster, huge amounts of benign value heading straight for the Burns Harbor blast furnaces with no conceivable redeeming public service rendered.

If I had a Huffington Post account I could say this there for the giggles inherent in being told that Redfield peeps can transform any weapon into a sniper rifle capable of killing children at a half-mile.