By ROBERT VISELLos Alamos
Miranda Viscoli, Co-president of New Mexicans To Prevent Gun Violence, claims her organization is NOT a gun control group.
Everything she stated in her recent letter was right out of the Gun Controller’s Playbook. This organization, as well as all the other gun control groups, are financially backed by none other than former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and are using his money to pay for these so called “Buybacks”.
First of all, It should not be called a “Gun Buyback” since you never sold them in the first place. A more appropriate name for It should be “Compensated Confiscation”.
I’m sure Ms. Viscoli would love for everyone to believe that this program really has an impact on the violence in our streets or will make people safer at home. Ms. Viscoli quotes numbers from a Los Angeles “Buyback” program yet Los Angeles continues to be one of the most gun related violent cities in the United States.
Chicago has also had these “Buyback” programs and look at the daily shootings that occur there!
Let me ask you this, Ms. Viscoli, you say you ask the individual why they are turning in the gun? But do you run the gun’s serial number through a data base of stolen or lost firearms both locally and nationally? NO!
How do you know where this firearm really came from? How do you know that this is not a criminal (or associate of said criminal) trying to dispose of evidence? You don’t! If the guns turned in are neither stolen or being turned in by a criminal then all you are doing is taking guns away from law abiding citizens and this does nothing to make our streets or homes safer.
Even studies conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research have shown gun buybacks do little to slow gun violence and condemns anyone for characterizing the buybacks as life-saving events.
But such programs have little impact on reducing violence. They don’t encroach on the individuals most likely to perpetrate violence, you are collecting guns that aren’t likely to be used in the commission of a crime, and there’s no clear data that the number of shootings drops after those guns are removed from the streets.
If someone wants to kill themselves they are going to do it whether a gun is available or not. You want to prevent your child from committing suicide then use what’s called “Good Parenting” and keep on top of everything your child is doing and who they’re hanging out with. Test them for drugs is you have to. You want to avoid children finding guns in the house then be a responsible gun owner and lock the guns up.
Ms. Viscoli is trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes and con them into believing that what this “Buyback” program will reduce the number of guns on the streets or make everyone’s lives safer. Instead she should take her focus off the guns and focus more on the individuals who use those guns to commit these acts of violence?
