Gun Buyback Misfires

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

Oakland’s Gun Buyback Misfires in a completely predictable way:

Oakland’s recent gun buyback was especially ridiculous. The police offered up to $250 for a gun “no questions asked, no ID required.” The first people in line? Two gun dealers from Reno with 60 cheap handguns. Fortunately the buyback did manage to get some guns off the street, too bad they were turned in by a bunch of senior citizens from an assisted living facility. Whew, the streets are safe at last.

Alex Tabarrok explains the problem:

Imagine that instead of guns, the Oakland police decided, for whatever strange reason, to buy back sneakers. The idea of a gun buyback is to reduce the supply of guns in Oakland. Do you think that a sneaker buyback program would reduce the number of people wearing sneakers in Oakland? Of course not.

All that would happen is that people would reach into the back of their closet and sell the police a bunch of old, tired, stinky sneakers.

It gets worse:

Imagine that gun dealers offered a guarantee with every gun: Whenever this gun gets old and wears down, the dealer will buy back the gun for $250.

The dealer’s guarantee makes guns more valuable, so people will buy more guns.

But the story is exactly the same when it’s the police offering the guarantee. If buyers know that they can sell their old guns in a buyback, they are more likely to buy new guns.

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