When your gun-hating state plans yet another ineffective program to stop criminal violence, the best way to promote it is to lie about it.
Enter New Jersey, where State Attorney General Christopher Porrino has announced a two-day statewide gun “buyback” program this summer in Trenton, Camden and Newark. In truth, no gun turn-in program anywhere has ever proven effective at curbing crime, and it’s likely Porrino knows that. But the public relations value must seem too appealing to him.
Disregarding the fact that turn-ins are not effective, supporters calling the program a “buyback" is equally maddening. The state never owned the guns that it hopes citizens—mostly law-abiding, at most such events—will turn in, so “buying them back” is just more smoke and mirrors to try to make the uninformed believe government officials are really doing something about violent crime.
