New Mexico Gun ‘Buyback’ an Exercise in Contradictions

“Gun buyback event coming to Farmington in December,” The Journal reports. “New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence partner with police for program.”

The first reason the article gives is that “Gun violence has spiked in New Mexico and in the Four Corners in the past year,” according to Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence. Later in the story, she contradicts herself, assuring everyone, “It is not anti-gun,” that it’s being held “to help people discard their unwanted guns in a safe manner,” and that it’s designed to get “unwanted guns out of circulation.”

She then returns to her original excuse.

“There is not one community in New Mexico that does not have a problem with gun violence,” Viscoli authoritatively declares.

Really? Her just saying that makes it so? That assertion implies she has data different than that documented by economist John Lott, who demonstrates:

“Murders in United States are very concentrated: 2% of counties had 56% of the murders in 2020, 52% of US counties had zero murders.”

Per an October KRQE “Fact Check,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is relying on “a presentation to lawmakers by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health” motivated to beef up “the state’s limited gun violence prevention laws” and “data [that] is far from perfect, and most of it is at least a few years out of date.”

“[M]ultiple times, the governor does not separate suicides from homicides and murders when discussing the statistics,” the report notes, and that’s a common tactic used by those whose coercive collectivist policies and insatiable controls result in gaslit desperation and “financial stress … a leading catalyst for suicide.”

Exploiting suicide to advance the citizen disarmament agenda is part of the gun-grabber playbook, and in doing so, they leave out several inconvenient truths. As noted in that article, the “go after everybody’s guns first” approach also ignores those who may be most in need of help, the “prohibited person” underclass population, more prone to ravages of unemployment, drug abuse, poverty, and general depression, that possesses “illegal” guns.

And don’t forget, guns are also banned in jails and prisons, both of which suffer from alarming suicide rates. Ironically, they’re highest in California, which imposes “safe storage” and has been given an “A” grade for its laws by Giffords. That’s not the only disarmed population concluding “not to be” is the answer.

“In Japan, more people died from suicide last month than from Covid in all of 2020. And women have been impacted most,” CNN reported. Japan, of course, limits handguns and rifles to the police and military.

Speaking of the “Only Ones,” studies have shown that “Police more likely to die by suicide than in line of duty.” That presumably includes those who will break their oaths and participate in gun confiscation raids should the prohibitionists figure it’s safe for them to try.

Once more speaking of “Only Ones,” and recalling Viscoli’s assurance that her joint venture police/prohibitionist public/private partnership (some might call that “fascism) “buyback” will allow people to “safely” dispose of “unwanted guns,” Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe makes a curious admission in a follow up promotional release for the event (masked by The Journal as a straight “news” story).

“Our role really is just to check the weapons, make sure that they’re not loaded, and I think sometimes inadvertently, that still does happen, because sometimes the people turning in guns aren’t really familiar with guns,” the chief admitted.

So, wait: He’s acknowledging in advance that he and his department are knowingly creating conditions to tempt people who may not know the first thing about guns to handle and then transport them? If they don’t know if it’s loaded, what other rules are they oblivious to, and what’s the chief’s rationale to decide that doesn’t that endanger them and everyone around them?

Drawing on personal experience, I have never taken a new-person shooting where I didn’t first go through the rules. When handing the gun over, I watched carefully to ensure my cautions were being followed while correcting or gently taking the gun back and reexplaining if needed.

But “Come on down, and you’re on your own” is what the Farmington Police Department, New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, and the “real reporters” at The Journal consider “gun safety,” and that’s what they’re urging everyone to take part in? And if someone gets hurt or worse due to this deliberately indifferent incentivized ignorance, have they run the chief’s admission by their respective legal departments to consider against the familiar civil complaint words “knew or should have known”?

What gains are worth this risk? Forget asking the gun-grab groups—they’re zealots with an agenda and impervious to reason. But you’d think at least law enforcement and “journalists” would know there’s more to investigate and look before leaping into a full-throated commitment.  After all, no less an authority than the DOJ’s National Institute of Justice concluded years ago in its “Summary of Select Firearm Violence Prevention Strategies” that:

“Evidence: Gun buybacks are ineffective as generally implemented. 1. The buybacks are too small to have an impact. 2. The guns turned in are at low risk of ever being used in a crime. 3. Replacement guns are easily acquired. Unless these three points are overcome, a gun buyback cannot be effective.”

In other words, this whole “gun-farce” is ridiculous posturing, and rational adults ought to know better.  In a way, they do because they’ve also included the caveat that “No 3d printed guns will be accepted.” That’s actually laughable for a number of reasons.

“No 3d printed guns will be accepted.”

Damn, I guess I’ll just use them as stocking stuffers instead https://t.co/6BDRIgtTXT pic.twitter.com/NRPd9DMRJt

— President Non_Fudd (@Non_Fudd) December 2, 2023

Still, New Mexico law requiring dealers and background checks will spare them the embarrassment of enterprising gun owners showing them up by offering cold, hard cash instead of “gift cards.”  Left unsaid is why they’re offering a $200 card for “semi-automatic handguns” and only $100 for “pistols.”

What’s also unclear is what New Mexico and federal law have to say about police “not … making contact with people turning in the guns” and then “turn[ing] them over to” Viscoli & Co. when they’re through clearing them. What, no background checks? Will there be an FFL on the premises to record transfers? Who? Some might want to know who to boycott.

And who “dismantles” the guns (is there a qualified gunsmith? Again, who?) and takes them over (transfers them) to “Robert F. Kennedy High School in Albuquerque’s South Valley (another transfer), where they are “turned into gardening tools”? Noting ATF’s penchant for ruling gun parts are full-blown firearms have all the legal “i’s” and “t’s” been dotted and crossed for frames and receivers? What controls are in place to legally validate that everything turned in through every stage of the process is accounted for?

What about the prohibition of firearms on school premises in New Mexico? And what about the student handbook prohibition on weapons (pp. 16-17) that includes:

“…Any type of knife… Any type of club… Any other item that may cause … injury or death…”

Did you get a look at the representative “garden tool” in The Journal story? It looks like something the star psycho would use in a slasher movie, and anyone coming at you with such a lethal claw would certainly merit being repelled with a firearm, especially considering, per FBI data, “cutting instruments” and “blunt objects” are used to kill many times more victims than all rifles combined, let alone so-called “assault weapons” (another New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence priority to ban).

Since they’re promiscuously releasing these unserialized “ghost tools” with no background checks or controls “onto the streets,” we’ll never know if a gun that could have been used in defense of human life was instead turned into a “killing machine” reminiscent of the Merced pitchfork murders, in which mandated “safe storage” diktats resulted in the terrorizing, agonizing slaughter of innocent children.

And tangentially related, as this article was being prepped for publication, this story from “gun controlled” France came across the transom, where an Islamist maniac with “tools” went on a murderous rampage…

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.