Michigan Lawmaker’s Comments Show Average Ignorance on Guns

Someone once said that if you’re not paying for a product, you’re the product. It’s true, too. Newspapers, for example. The reader isn’t the customer, they’re the product. Advertisers are the customers. That’s where the money comes from.

Basically, anything free is free for a reason. Companies are making their money somewhere.

With guns turned in at so-called gun buybacks, a lot of companies offered to destroy the guns and do so for free. Well, they did. They destroyed the parts of the firearm that were, in fact, the firearm, then sold the other parts.

And a recent bill in Michigan seeks to put an end to entities using these services to dispose of guns.

Lawmakers in the state House passed legislation Thursday to update Michigan’s gun buyback program to require the complete destruction of the firearm and prohibit any public auction of the weapon.

Gun buyback programs allow those possessing firearms to voluntarily relinquish them.

House Bills 6144, 6145 and 6146 would make the changes to the Michigan State Police’s gun buyback program, requiring the department to complete the destruction of firearms purchased by a municipality through a buyback program, prohibiting the resale of the firearm.

The bills passed on party-line votes of 56-53. They now move to the Senate in the waning days of the Michigan Legislature’s lame-duck session.

The votes on the bills come after an investigation by The New York Times published last year found that Michigan State Police was one of the biggest clients of a firearms disposal company that destroyed one part of a firearm and resold other components. The Michigan State Police subsequently halted its contract with the company.

“I was appalled to find out that across the nation, buyback programs were turning around and giving firearms a second chance,” said state Rep. Felicia Brabec, D-Pittsfield Township, and chair of the Michigan Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention Caucus in a statement Wednesday. “This is simply unacceptable. I’ve been working hard to get this legislation ready — we must continue enacting policies to protect our communities, our kids and their futures.”

Except that the guns were, in fact, destroyed.

See, these are people who seek to legislate what we can and can’t do, who have strong opinions on firearms, and who don’t have the first clue what the hell they’re talking about.

The guns were, in fact, destroyed. The only things left were parts that were not guns. These were just parts. They’re completely unregulated because they’re not guns. That’s it.

Yet people are up in arms about this.

I can’t help but ask, “What did you think was happening?”

Again, if something is free, you should probably ask how they’re paying the bills. A non-profit might well be getting donations, but a private for-profit company isn’t taking in stuff and destroying it for free without some way to make a return. No one seemed to ask because no one seemed to care. Why should they? The gun–the quintessential piece required to hold those parts together and make the firearm work–was destroyed.

Now people are up in arms over it, saying that these guns are getting “a second chance” when nothing of the sort is happening.

There’s ignorance all around, and that’s a problem because these are the people trying to make up the rules about something they have no understanding of.