Last weekend my suburbic municipality offered a gun buy-back.
And I jumped on it.
I had a Chicom SKS for 14 years. I bought it at a gun shop in Killeen, TX for about $100. I was really in the market for an AK, but they were going for $225-ish and I just couldn't swing that kind of bread as a young enlisted soldier. I mean, what the hell was I supposed to drink with if I blew all my dough on an effing rifle? My company commander bought one soon after, and we even went to the range together once.
After I got out, I shot it mmmmmaybe four times, and not at all since about 1995. Just had little time for the range, and once the gun laws changed in my state I was ass-out anyway; I couldn't shoot it legally. Well in the intervening decade or so I moved a half-dozen times, took a few college degrees, got married, and did all the other stuff one is supposed to do to exhibit maturity and adulthood. And in all those years, that rifle quietly sat locked up in this or that closet. In time, surface rust slowly appeared and spread, and I noticed a hairline crack in the face of the bolt. Even less incentive to put my face near it and pull the trigger.
About a year ago I asked my local PD how I could get rid of it; I thought they might could use it for training purposes. But they didn't want it, and said that if I really wanted to get rid of it, I could arrange to leave it with the State Police, who would destroy it. But I held out. I just knew that a buy back would be coming along sooner or later. It was later, but it finally came. And I got that weapon out of my life for good.
Now the local PDs here are- with some exception, I grant you- blatantly anti-2nd Amendment, anti-gun-in-private-hands, and as firm in their belief that they know what's best for everybody as they are in their conviction that they know weapons better than any mere citizen. Call it the arrogance of the badge if you like, every adult has seen it at some time. So it was not without mild amusement that the first guys I spoke with, who were not in uniform so I don't know that they were cops or not, didn't know what the weapon even was. Since they asked, I explained the weapon's history (call it a paragraph's worth of info), and showed them how the action worked (as best I could with a cable lock in it). Then the uniformed cop I turned the rifle in to couldn't manage the cable lock (which I had minutes before made sure was functional), so to avoid doing it for him in front of everybody just quietly told him he could cut it if he had to. Oh, and that was after he exclaimed it was an "assault rifle" which, in my state, it is, but in the real world you could do alot better than "assaulting" with a 10 round internal magazine rifle with a design that harkens back to an era of Sherman tanks and propeller-driven fighter planes. But I found his excitement over netting both an "assault rifle" and, after a quick going-over, determining that it was "yup, a semi-automatic!", humorous.
So after a filled out an anonymous questionaire about my gun-related habits ("Do you feel safer now that you have turned your gun in?"- type stuff) I got $75 in Wal Mart gift cards. Now, I didn't even know how much or in what form I would be getting my reward. But I was very happy with what I got. Don't laugh. With a toddler in the house, I can blaze through $75 at Wal Mart easily- a box of diapers (up to level 5 containment now), some juice, maybe a new book, and some jammies or something'll wipe that out quick. Oh, and I took 2 new cable locks too on the way out.
And in the end everybody wins. Do illegal weapons get turned in at these things? I don't know. Do old pieces of crap get turned in at these things, which people just don't want anymore? Definitely. But in the end it probably doesn't matter much. I got rid of a piece of junk for about $75 more than it might be worth (especially considering that brand new packed-in-grease models of Balkan manufacture are still under $200), which was far more preferable to giving it to the Staties for free; and the day after the buy-back the cops get to say they snapped up howevermany assault rifles off our streets. Here "our streets" means rusting quietly in my closet, but ok. The public says "great job" all 'round, and we all sleep snugly at night.
On the way home, Lady Lethal asked me if I was thinking about turning in either of my other guns. "Fuck no!" I exclaimed, "They're worth money!"
Although, thinking about it now, if the constabulary cares to come up with, say, an even grand, I might consider it.
May 2007
on
| § 1
