New York changes gun buyback after seller gets $21,000 for 3D-printed parts
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I can see that offering more money than the cost of production is ridiculously stupid, as it just leads to unlimited production. But how is it stupid when all offers are below cost?
That was his point - in this age of 3d printed and CAM'd gun parts, the cost of production is extremely low. He was getting $450 for a sear - a very small part. Even their rule changes don't fix this - for that kind of $$ I could have hundreds of those CAM'd or even 3d printed in metal, and use the $$ to pay for a decent chunk of a production shop.
Trivial to 3D print, or file down a piece of scrap metal into the right shape. Just goes to show how inane gun laws can be.
How do you get the parts to the buyback program if you can't drive to them?
You can carve one out of sheet metal in a couple minutes. This won’t stop evil people.
Even worse, a self centering punch and 5 seconds can turn your AR-15 into an illegal automatic weapon as far as the ATF is concerned (just punch approximately where the auto pin would go).
The only people affected by these garbage laws are the ones who aren’t interested in harming anyone.
You can murder a person with the same level of effort.
The only people affected by these garbage laws against murder are the ones who aren’t interested in harming anyone.
It's also one of those situations where the practical reality of being caught for something like this is basically nil. Especially when the intent is neither to sell, distribute, nor use them yourself.
Isn't a "sear" a standard part of a trigger mechanism? What is illegal about it?
Making a sear is completely federally legal in the US.
It is however illegal to make a sear featuring support for automatic or select fire, unless you have the appropriate licensing to manufacture.
This guy built sears for a 3D printed gun. I think he will be okay.
Paying fair market value for the guns is the solution. Asking for gun donations without paying for them is another. If they do either of these, then the shenanigans stop.
> and setting a standard that all 3D-printed guns accepted by the program must be capable of being fired more than once.
This is dumb and will be ineffectual at stopping shenanigans. If they did even a minute of research they would know this new rule won't help. The people 'pranking' these buyback programs can and do make extremely cheap guns that are made out of metal pipe and can fire more than once: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/12/22/5-homemade-sh...
If you want to stop that, pay fair market value for the guns. Homemade guns have essentially zero market value, so stop paying people to make them.
But both of those suggestions may undermine the real motivations for these programs, especially the second one.
How would you like it if you and your whole family were poor, and you learned that your grandmother sold a $1000 rifle for $100 of walmart gift cards because she was desperate, didn't know what the gun was worth, and trusted the police to not scam her?
BTW, many of these "buyback" programs are funded by people like Doris Buffett. Run by the police but paid for by wealthy donors. They can afford to pay fair market value, they just prefer to scam people.
I agree there. I guess the point I was trying to make the program's logic could mean it makes sense for it to pay more than fair market value, even for 3D printed guns.
I didn't realize they could be low-balling prices and exploiting desperate people.
Seeing a P38 on the table next to a $100 HiPoint in the article photo drives this home. That's a $1k+ relic that the seller probably got $150 for.
this approach also has issues.
if someone wants to sell a gun for fair market value, they don't need the state as a counterparty. unless of course they don't legally own the gun, in which case the "fair market value" is zero. I guess you could appraise the gun as if it were legal, but then what if the person doesn't like the offer? are they expected to trust that there will be no repercussions for walking back out holding all the evidence needed to charge them with a felony?
seems to me the best and simplest approach is an amnesty box. getting to walk away without risk of prosecution should be enough of a reward for turning in a hot gun. and if the gun is in fact legally owned, why does the state want to take it off their hands so badly?
Or,
Old widow has some rifles her dead husband left in her closet. She legally owns them, but she doesn't know that and she's afraid she might have done something wrong.
On the other hand, you have things like removable drop-in auto-sears (RDIAS) [1], Glock selector switches [2], MP5 auto-sears, AR15 -> M16 conversion jigs, handmade silencers (suppressors) [3], and numerous other components that not only require a federal license to create/possess/use, but also require a special taxpayer status called an SOT (Special Occupational Taxpayer) [4] because all of the aforementioned items are construed as machine guns (even if the device merely converts a firearm to a machine gun, and of course silencers) under the National Firearms Act of 1934 [5], and later clarified with the Gun Control Act of 1968 [6].
In addition to those items, NFA also deals with short-barrel rifles (rifles with barrels under 16 inches in length) and short-barrel shotguns (shotguns with barrels under 18 inches in length) which are incredibly easy to "accidentally" own. However, the largest firearms loophole in the country is that by attaching a "pistol brace" to an otherwise regulated short-barrel rifle, you are in compliance. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are currently in violation of the National Firearms Act of 1934 because they possess these short-barrel AR-15's. The differences between these two configurations are strikingly and laughably small [7].
Especially with the machine gun parts, the idea of governments/municipalities expecting citizens to simply surrender them - even for "fair market" value - is simply absurd and altruistic.
Fun Fact: You yourself (in most states) can own a fully-automatic firearm! The only catch is that it has to be manufactured before May 1986, be registered under NFA, and transferred to you on an ATF Form 4 (which requires a $200 tax stamp [the same as it cost in 1934] and around 210+ days of waiting). These are known as "transferable machine guns" and are quite valuable despite their almost-identical resemblance to their semi-automatic counterparts. Here are some for sale: https://otbfirearms.com/nfa/transferable-machine-guns/
[1] https://www.recoilweb.com/turning-your-ar-15-into-an-m-16-15...
[2] https://buybestguns.com/product/semi-full-auto-glock-handgun...
[3] https://solventtrapsdirect.com/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Occupational_Taxpayers
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Control_Act_of_1968
[7] https://www.guns.com/news/reviews/ar-pistol-vs-ar-rifle-what...
I mean fine, you don't care for the buy back or support the idea of forfeiting your firearms but what did he intend to prove by doing this?
I'm more surprised he was allowed to sell firearms with an out of state license or no proof of living within the state.
Shameless promotion, but even absent such gaming I am quite skeptical these are cost-effective, https://andrewpwheeler.com/2022/08/21/gun-buy-back-programs-....
Making it so they only take working handguns, and if the gift cards were more on the order of $25-$50 makes it a more palatable to me from a cost-benefit perspective. But still evidence they actually work is pretty slim.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/australi...
Basically when you see an extreme (American) view on gun control trying to use Australia as an argument for their policy, you should just laugh at them. The numbers are so "inconclusive"/"manipulatable" that such a view can use the numbers to say whatever they want to their own uncritical base.
If you don't have empathy for the problem then by all means ignore the actions that's being taken in an attempt to rectify the problem. By no means is a buyback going to solve the issue tomorrow but it certainly isn't hurting this man or anyone who's against the idea.
If this man truly wanted to "point out the flaws" with this program he simply could've made the drive and speak his mind at a city council meeting, email, leave a voice mail to the party in charge of the program.
There's no shortage of apathy in this country and exploiting a public system rather than coming together to find a solution seems counterproductive.
By all means, let's disarm prohibited persons though. But can you can stomach the "disparate impact?"
It's even more comical when firearm manufactures record their most profitable years when Dem's control the white house.
You're straying rather close to intellectual dishonesty here. I think you're well aware there are some people in the USA who very much do want to force people to give up their firearms. Furthermore, similar groups have largely succeeded in other countries. That's why it keeps getting argued.
> It's even more comical when firearm manufactures record their most profitable years when Dem's control the white house.
I don't get the joke. What's funny about a perceived future shortage pushing demand forward in time? We saw the same dynamic with toilet paper in 2020. I suppose it's kind of funny that the perception of a shortage then creates a shortage, but somehow I don't think that's what you meant.
it also raises doubts about the number of guns/parts that were actually removed from circulation (vs purchased/manufactured only to turn in). I recall a similar story where a guy simply bought the entire stock of cheap shotguns from a local Walmart and turned them in for $80 profit each.
They are wasting public funds to further their narrative that gun violence is an entirely natural phenomenon - sort of like a hurricane - where people people involved in it are universally victims of the circumstance and have no agency in the matter. It's the only explanation why presumably rational people would set up asinine-economics schemes like these:
Eg offering $400 for garbage hi-point 9mms pictured that change hands for $100-200 on the black market - essentially a wellfare subsidy program for gangbangers.