Save the Guns! Support buying back an abused and unwanted firearm
Here is a spoof I heard played on the Randi Rhodes show Thursday. It features Sarah McLachlan’s song “In the Arms of an Angel” in the background while a man pleads to “save the guns.” Remember, “every gun has a right to life and to live up to its full potential to kill innocent children. Life begins when you disengage the safety.”
Background: On the anniversary of Gabrielle Giffords shooting, the Tucson Police Department held a gun buyback where any citizen is allowed to drop of any firearm – no questions asked – and receive a $50 Safeway gift card. There were 206 firearms turned in and the police wish to destroy them as that is the idea of the buyback program. A means for people who no longer wish to hang onto their firearms for whatever reason to be able to have them safely destroyed.
Republican Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik didn’t expect this response, though.
“I’ve been getting threats,” Kozachik said. “I’ve been getting emails. I’ve been getting phone calls in the office trying to shut this thing down or ‘We’re going to sue you’ or ‘Who do you think you are?’ “
Todd Rathner, an Arizona lobbyist and a national board member of the NRA, may sue. “We do believe that it is illegal for them to destroy those guns,” he says. Rathner adds that Arizona state law forces local governments to sell seized or abandoned property to the highest bidder. “If property has been abandoned to the police, then they are required by ARS 12-945 to sell it to a federally licensed firearms dealer, and that’s exactly what they should do,” he says.
Well, Rathner is wrong. These firearms were sold to the police department, thus the name “buy back.” They are not seized or abandoned.
That is not the case here. Not at all.
It is sickening to see the NRA show more concern and compassion for inanimate firearms – pieces of metal designed to kill – than they do for the innocent victims who have been at the receiving end of their precious firearms.
Some people – including the NRA – really need to get their priorities in check. In all honesty, though, I do not expect this to happen whatsoever. Especially after their response to 20 young children being massacred is to put more guns out there and in people’s possession.
Here is an interesting forum thread about this very same topic.
References:
NPR: NRA Vows To Stop Tucson From Destroying Guns
Global Grind: “Don’t Destroy The Guns!” NRA Pleads With Tucson To Save Guns From Buyback Program (DETAILS)
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Motley News, Photos and Fun 
As a gun owner who respects the 2nd amendment, I’d like to offer the following suggestions…
First of all, I think everyone in this country should have the right to bare arms…that would be sleeveless tee shirts…men and women alike. Or perhaps we should arm bears so that they would have a fighting chance against hunters…that would kinda equal everything out. Of course, your wacko Uncle John, the one whose house is filled with taxidermy, might not be at your next holiday family dinner, but that would be all right, wouldn’t it?
Everyone in the country, as stated in the 1791 2nd amendment to the Constitution adopted on December 15, 1791…along with the rest of the Bill of Rights should have the right to own a musket or perhaps a blunderbuss, a weapon of mass destruction. And of course, as stated in the 2nd amendment, they all should be required to be registered members of a bona fide militia.
All other guns should in my humble opinion, require a permit and registration of both the weapon and the weapon owner. Furthermore, anyone wishing to own anything other than a musket or perhaps a blunderbuss should be required to receive training on said weapon in order to receive that permit. Your mother taught you how to hold a fork and knife I trust…therefore, you should not object to being trained by a competent instructor to handle another potentially deadly weapon. You need training to operate a motor vehicle, why not a gun?
Now, I’m not asking you to do anything I haven’t already done myself, ‘cause I’ve done exactly that. In order to obtain the gun permit I hold, I had to satisfy a qualified instructor that I understand how to use said weapon safely, that I understood the ramifications of using it and that I wasn’t a threat to the state or nation.
If I want to buy a gun, I go to a certified weapons dealer. I don’t believe some Joe Shmough walking up and down the aisles of a gun show with an arsenal of guns strapped to his person is necessarily the best choice from whom to purchasing a gun. Nor do I believe in buying a gun listed on a local internet site…clandestinely meeting Joe Shmough in some strip center parking lot in the dead of night for the exchange of cash for a weapon. I know that a lot of people like Joe Shmough. He doesn’t ask any questions. He doesn’t care what I might do with the weapon once it’s sold. He doesn’t care whether I might be a terrorist or a bank robber, or whether I might be a felon (I’m not).
Also, quite selfishly, if there’s something wrong with that weapon, I have absolutely no recourse. Yeah, try finding Joe Shmoe when the gun show is over. He isn’t likely to show up at that parking lot again either. Joe Shmough doesn’t contribute to the tax base of the community in which I live, but the gun dealer does. He, like me, pays taxes.
Because of my permit, I don’t have to wait the mandatory time to take my weapon home. I get to take it home when I purchase it, though the gun shop does get the particulars of my purchase and my identity from my permit for their records, which they no doubt pass along to the proper authorities. I don’t have a problem with them passing that information along.
Although I do believe in some conspiracy theories, a government hit list isn’t one of them. I don’t believe the government has a Machiavellian plot to take my guns away. Hey, if it comes down to it, they don’t have to pry my guns from my cold dead hands. I’ll give them up. I don’t think that if and when it comes, me and a whole lot of other gun owners will make much of a difference. I don’t live at the Alamo…and that didn’t work for those who gathered there either.
You know, I’m not a member of the NRA…you might say I’m a proud non-member. I’m not one of the four million whose ‘leadership’ has undue influence upon a government that should be working on behalf of the three hundred and fifty million other Americans, but in the case of gun control and too many other matters, doesn’t.
The NRA is nothing more than a self-interested, self-perpetuating political action group and their politics don’t match up with mine.
Before the last presidential election I received an overly venomous diatribe from none other than that lovable lunatic, Wayne ‘good guys with guns versus bad guys with guns’ La Pierre (see reference to Uncle John in an earlier paragraph). In a rather disgusting, vicious manner he pointed out all his and the NRA’s perceived evils of another Barack Obama presidency, and how ‘we’ needed to ban together by sending the NRA money to fight against Obama and for guns for all.
I sent his kind request back sans any funds and at the top of his letter nicely wrote…and I quote…”Mr. La Pierre, I am a gun owning Democrat and you are a hate mongering son of a bitch.”
I worry when someone like Wayne La Pierre has access to a gun.
Woo-hoo! A responsible gun-owner with common sense! I know there are some of you out there, and finally one appeared. Thank you! I’m not entirely opposed to guns, but see no need for assault, military, large capacity magazines, and the like. Those were made purely to kill as many men as quickly as possible.
La Pierre isn’t right in the head. He lives in a fantasy world of the old west. The good guys versus the bad guys.
I agree with the right to bare arms. But what about the right to arm bears? heehee https://motleynews.net/2013/01/11/screw-the-right-to-bear-arms-it-is-the-right-to-arm-bears/
Thanks for your approval. I’ve just subscribed to your blog after researching an article about the potential of a Republican ‘intervention’ of voting machines in northwestern Ohio and an interception by ‘Annonymous’…that being the more than possible reason for Karl Rove’s meltdown on Faux news on election night.
I enjoy what I see. Many thanks for your outstanding work.
Mike.
“Thanks for my approval?” Not quite sure if this is sarcasm or being sincere. But either way, I’m not here to provide approvals… just a lot of opinions, venting, “wtf are people thinking”, and some good laughs and photography.
Glad you like what you have read and look forward to reading your comments. You really have something that seems to be going the way of the dinosaurs… common sense.
Yeah, Karl Rove was actually very odd that night. I’m not sure if someone created that story after Rove’s breakdown and used the circumstances to make that story fit; or if it is actually true. Personally, I hope it’s true. At least the part that Rove was hacked and caught by the hackers. Rather explains a lot of odd results in the past.
Buyback or giveback, I’m astounded that anyone would/could object (since the guns aren’t theirs) and that there’s any law that says guns can’t be destroyed. If I give you something, it becomes yours and you can destroy it if you want — especially if you’ve announced in advance that that is your intention. No third party should have any say in the matter.
The NRA was clearly twisting the law to serve his own purpose. But it won’t hold water. The police dept owns those firearms. Nothing less.