There’s a self-styled entrepreneur in the neighborhood where I work who walks around every day with a shopping cart picking up empty bottles and cans. When his shopping cart is full, he goes to some redemption center, dumps the bottles and cans in some kind of big machine which turns them into metal and glass that can be used to make more bottles and cans. Then he gets some cash, goes home and the whole process begins again the next day.

              This guy does particularly well in the summer months because that’s when everyone’s sitting outside on the stoop drinking soda and beer to keep cool. Most of the neighborhood folks dump their empties in a garbage can next to their homes which makes it easier for this guy to fill up his shopping cart without having to run around picking up just one can here or one bottle there.

              I started thinking about my neighborhood can and bottle collector when I read a media story out of Chicago where Mayor Lori Lightfoot has announced a new program to reduce gun violence by paying residents of the 2^nd City to turn in unwanted guns. She’s setting up a million-dollar fund which will be used to pay anyone who brings a gun to the police – details to be forthcoming soon.

              What Mayor Lightfoot is referring to as a “bold and creative action” is no different than what happens at gun buybacks which take place in various cities from time to time. In New York, the Attorney General has been sponsoring gun buybacks in different cities since 2013 and has collected more than 3,200 guns.

              Do gun buybacks work? It depends on what you mean by using the word ‘work.’ There doesn’t seem to be any direct connection between the number of guns collected in a buyback and the before-and-after stats on violent crime. But there does seem to be some value in buybacks because they alert the community both to the issue of gun violence, as well as helping to promote more governmental and police attention to reducing the violence caused by guns.

              What bothers me about the Chicago program, however, is not whether the buyback will work or won’t work. The problem is that the program is designed, according to Mayor Lightfoot, to incentivize people to turn in ‘illegal’ guns.

“We need everyone’s help to make sure we are doing everything we can to address this horrible plague of illegal firearms,” says Her Honor, the Mayor.

Actually, the good citizens of Chicago don’t have to turn up at the po-leece and drop off an ‘illegal’ gun. All they have to do is give the cops a ‘tip’ as to where the cops can find an illegal gun. 

So, this program isn’t a gun buyback. It’s a gun tip-off. Call the cops, tell them that so-and-so next door has a gun he’s not supposed to have, and you get some kind of reward.

Did it ever occur to Mayor Lightfoot that crimes are usually solved because the cops get an ‘anonymous’ tip? How can you give an anonymous tip about a gun crime if you want to get a reward? And by definition, anyone in possession of an ‘illegal’ gun has already committed a crime.

I don’t want to play Friday morning quarterback but to me, this scheme (to quote Grandpa) sounds pretty fa-cocktd.  Over the July 4^th weekend, the Windy City celebrated our country’s independence with 104 people shot, of whom 19 were killed. In other words, we have a gun-violence pandemic in Chicago which is much worse than the pandemic from Covid-19.

Over the July 4^th weekend, an average of 5 persons were admitted to a Chicago hospital for Covid-19 illness each day. Admissions to hospitals for gun injuries should be so low.

Back in 2007, our good friend Kathy Kaufer Christoffel published a fundamental article on gun violence, “Firearm Injuries: Epidemic Then, Endemic Now.” 

I think we need to give Dr. Christoffel’s article a new title because gun injuries were epidemic back then, but for sure they are pandemic now.