Mayor Paul Soglin of Madison, Wis., has announced a new program offering a $1,000 bounty for information that leads to the seizure of “illegal firearms that have been used in a violent incident.”
The Capital Times reports that Soglin is funding the program with money from the mayor’s office, even though studies in other cities evaluating the effectiveness of this type of program are still in progress. “At this juncture I’m not going to wait for their conclusions and recommendations,” he stated.
Why is Mayor Soglin rushing to implement a program with no empirical backing? “… There are a number of individuals … who have little regard for safety of others as well as themselves,” he explained. “They are destroying the fabric of our community and peace of mind of Madison residents.” So … maybe try putting out a bounty on those actual criminals? That might yield better results than continuing to pretend that guns are the real problem.
