Pensacola Wastes $10,000 Buying Junk Guns During So-called "Gun Buyback" Program

March 22, 2021 3:15pm

I was at Saturday's so-called "gun buyback" (which is an absurd term because the city never owned them to begin with) from 8:30a - 12:15p, and I can attest it was no success.  The city overpaid for EVERY gun they bought. It was a joke. But it wasn't funny because it was $10,000 of taxpayer money they wasted on it.

But our idiot Mayor Grover Robinson said "I didn't realize the gun buyback program would be so successful." 

And City Councilman Delarian Wiggins (who proposed this hare-brained idea) said "it was a huge success" because the gun buyback removed "opportunities for a person that commits suicide that is no longer there."  Really, Wiggins?  When will you propose to waste taxpayer money to buy back drugs, rope, and plastic bags since poisonings and suffocation account for 42% of all suicides?  After all, you are on the record saying that "if it saves just one life," it would be worthwhile. 

Six days before the event, I bought three guns for the sole purpose of selling them to the city Saturday morning. Two were junk revolvers I purchased at a pawn shop for less than $25 (total not each). And the other was a brand new Rossi .22 rifle that retails for $149.99. The city paid me $450 for those three guns which were worth at most $175 retail. I will donate all $450 to the NRA, which does far more to promote gun safety than this taxpayer-funded boondoggle ever will.

The NRA has funded more than $400 million in gun safety programs for the Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts, NJROTC, YMCA, 4H, and FFA, among others. The gun rights organization funds things like the Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program along with projects like shooting range development, firearms safety and education, conservation research, hunter education, law enforcement training, and many other important firearm ownership programs.

What did Pensacola's "gun buyback" do to promote gun safety? Nothing. All it did was overpay people for junk guns using taxpayer money.  It was nothing but a colossal waste of money that will do absolutely nothing to reduce gun crime.  The mayor and city council that approved it should be ashamed.  But they're not.  They think it was a success.  And that is disgraceful.

I was interviewed by the local ABC TV station at Saturday's event. Their news story is in the video above. I understand news interviews such as this need to be edited. I just wish they had included the part about how I was donating the $450 I got to the NRA. Why? Because I know that would piss off the fools who hate the NRA and think this "gun buyback" program was worthwhile.

The above video consists of the story that aired on the news followed by unedited footage of the entire interview.