Texas Blocks Taxpayer Funds for Gun ‘Buybacks’

I’m not getting into how stupid the term “buyback” is. We both know it’s idiotic and why it’s idiotic, but we also both know what I’m talking about when I say it, so that’s just what the term is going to be when I talk about these things.

But do you know what’s not stupid?

Never seeing another taxpayer dime going toward these moronic events that are nothing more than PR efforts to make it look like people are addressing violent crime without having to address violent crime.

That’s what the status quo in Texas will be going forward.

They say everything is bigger in Texas. That must include the middle finger they just waved in Democrats’ faces as the Texas House passed legislation on May 13, prohibiting counties or cities from wasting taxpayer dollars on funding and operating gun “buyback” programs.

House Bill (HB) 3053, the first bill introduced by freshman legislator Wesley Virdell (R-Brady), succeeded on a lower chamber vote of 85-56 after lengthy debate regarding state regulations on local government and the effectiveness, or rather ineffectiveness, of gun “buyback” programs. Virdell planted his feet firmly, explaining that these “buybacks” cause counties and municipalities to spend a “shocking” amount of taxpayer funds for no tangible benefit or return for the public, pointing out that confiscation dressed in “buyback” clothing has proven to have in “no way reduced violent crime.”

“[B]ased on the studies and some of the people who’ve actually participated in these gun ‘buybacks’ … huge costs of money from the taxpayers, and it doesn’t actually have any statistical evidence that it reduces crime or suicides… in some cases, crime actually increased in those areas afterwards,” says Virdell.

Leaving it to Democrats to distort sound logic with hyperbole,  Representative Gene Wu (D-Houston), took it upon himself to question Virdell about HB 3053’s propensity to block “local governments from taking actions that they feel is necessary to protect their city.”

Which might be valid if there was even a hint of gun buybacks actually working.

They don’t. Study after study has shown they don’t work. Literally nothing suggests that they do. The one study that almost kinda suggests they do was flawed because it claimed they worked in conjunction with other interventions, but failed to look at what those other interventions would do by themselves.

They. Don’t. Work.

All they do is waste taxpayer money in a feel-good, do-nothing event that makes a lot of press for local officials.

If private parties want to waste their own money on these, so be it. That’s their right. But taxpayer money is the people’s money, and there are better ways to spend it, especially when talking about public safety.

I’m glad to see a state do this. Now, the other 49 need to do it, too, assuming they haven’t already.

Violent crime is an issue we’ll probably never truly solve, but we should strive to address just the same. Yet that effort needs to focus on things that might actually make a difference, not failed strategies that officials know don’t work but keep doing anyway just to look good for the cameras. If they want to fund it themselves, that’s fine, but we shouldn’t have to.

We should do better as a nation.