LA County Sheriff Spends $95,000 in Gun ‘Buy-Back’

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dropped more than $95,000 in Target, Best Buy, and Ralph’s (a supermarket) gift cards to buy 965 firearms from the residents of Compton.  What does the Sheriff’s Department hope to accomplish with this money and disarming?

“We’re not naive enough to think that criminals will come in and give their guns,” said Deputy Tim Tellez who coordinated the event for the Sheriff’s Department.

Oh, right.  So, this effort is just about disarming the law abiding citizens of your county.

It seems that in the down economy, most people were looking for the supermarket gift cards to put some food on the table.

“I talked to a lot of the people coming through, and most of the people were just interested in getting food and clothing for their families,” said Sgt. Byron Woods of the Sheriff’s Department. “A lot of them normally wouldn’t have turned in their guns, but they really need to put food on the table.”

The sad thing is that Tellez said that a group of protesters that were on scene may have been gun store owners who thought that people were being coerced into giving up their weapons.  I guess he doesn’t consider hungry citizens being offered a gift card for food in exchange for their firearm as coercion.