For the most part, I cannot help but applaud the efforts of Philadelphia mayoral candidate (and Penn alum) Chakah Fattah for his innovative program of getting guns off the streets. He led an initiative that offered $200 in FroGro vouchers and two Sixers tickets (and no questions asked) in exchange for a gun. The theory is that fewer guns on the street would yield less violent crime. Anything that can stem Philadelphia’s soaring murder rate is worth a try.
Fattah’s program was quite the success,. 267 firearms were surrendered on a single wintry day. Fattah should be commended for his program that unwittingly uses a market mechanism and incentives to get people to surrender their guns This is not only far more constitutional than far-reaching government bans on the things, but far more effective too (to quote the old cliché, “if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.” Everybody wins.
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| A gunman fatally shot three people before turning the gun on himself in an office building at the old Philadelphia Navy Yard on Monday night, police said. Violent crime continues to be a huge problem in Philadelphia.(AP Photo/Matt Rourke) |
The only problem is that the program announces that it will be destroying all collected guns–including the ones that are collector’s items, worth potentially thousands of dollars.
Take, for example, the Imperial Japanese rifle. Fattah & Co. can either turn this into a few thousand dollars, or a lump of molten metal. Given that there is no shortage of noble causes that can use a few thousand dollars–the Boys & Girls Club, The Red Cross, The Penn Fund, The Buy-John-Kneeland-an-iPhone fund–the idea that Fattah would literally send this opportunity up in smoke is baffling.
Would this collectors’ item wind up back “on the streets?” Doubtful. I’ve never seen any Penn crime report that said, “the assailant pulled out a giant vintage WWII rifle…” The dangerous weapons are those that are concealable, and “is that an Imperial Japanese rifle in your pants or are you just happy to see me?” seems just a tad implausible.
Furthermore, presumably people close enough to the economic margins to sell guns for $200 of food wouldn’t be interested in a $3000 collector’s firearm far too huge to be concealed anyway.
If this were any more fiscally irresponsible, it would have been conjured up by Penn’s College Housing (zing!) or the Bush Administration (double-zing!). If Fattah is going to run for mayor, let’s hope he has more fiscal sense than he is displaying with this unfortunate waste of money.
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February 13th, 2007 at 8:34 am
I think this is a worthwhile proposal. You should make it more formal and CC Mayor Street and the Mayoral Candidates.
February 13th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Oh John, Economics 101 (actually more like economics 300, but in any case), the economics of law and crime, show in many studies that incentive programs to get guns off the street (see levitt, I believe) can never work (or at least be as effective as they propose themselves to be). The gun market is far too complex on far too many levels for such a (government) operation.
February 13th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
WLR just schooled your ass. Plus, government regulation actually is, in a way, the solution to Philly’s gun problem. The guns being used to commit crimes and murders are illegally possessed, nearly 100%, and this is a fact. How do all these illegal guns get in the city? Because someone with a clean record can go out to Morgantown and purchase two dozen or so handguns and bring them back for distribution. He or she can repeat this act every few months. It seems to me that the average man protecting his family or collecting guns doesn’t need a dozen duplicates for police to collect later from slain bodies.