Newport News, St. Louis, New Haven, and other cities are conducting gun "buybacks." In a 2000 article for National Review Online, I suggested that gun "buybacks" were a poor idea. Social science research by persons who are generally sympathetic to gun control has found no evidence that buybacks reduce gun misuse--since the people who surrender their guns tend to not be the kind of people who would misuse a gun in the first place.

Moreover, the term "buyback" is a misnomer, since the police departments did not originally own the guns. And the notion of taxpayer dollars or government employee time being used to encourage people to surrender the means of exercising their constitutional rights is contrary to, at the least, the spirit of the state and federal Bills of Rights.