Texas Bans Gun Buyback Schemes

One of the oldest schemes in the anti-gun playbook is now illegal in the state of Texas. The state’s leaders have announced a ban on so-called gun buybacks run by municipalities, passing the bill with a signature from Governor Greg Abbot after the state senate gave it their approval earlier in the spring.

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The problem with buybacks

On the surface, gun buybacks look like they’re not that bad. A city offers an amnesty where they buy guns from you, no questions asked, for a fixed fee. It’s all voluntary, with no door-kicking and seizure, so where’s the harm?

The problem is two-fold. First, gun buybacks have very little research proving that they actually work to reduce violent crime. Their proponents often tout them as a part of an overall strategy, because they have a hard time showing actual improvements in crime rates due to the buyback. For further research, check out this paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which states in the abstract: “Using data from the National Vital Statistics System, we also find no evidence that GBPs reduce suicides or homicides where a firearm was involved. These results call into question the efficacy of city gun buyback programs in their current form.” Read the whole paper for more on this theme.

Given that government budgets are limited, the wisdom of using those finite funds on programs that can’t be demonstrated to help is questionable. Buybacks take funding away from other crime-fighting programs, and are open to abuse by entrepreneurial types who figure out how to game the system.

The other problem is that a buyback isn’t really a buyback if the government never owned the guns in the first place. This clouding of terminology opens governments to then cloak seizures as buybacks, forcing shooters to sell their firearms to the government whether they want to or not. This is exactly what is happening in Canada right now.

The Texas buyback ban

The Texan ban comes into effect on September 1. When House Bill 3053 comes into effect, this is what the new law will say:

A municipality or county may not adopt or enforce an ordinance, order, or other measure in which the municipality or county organizes, sponsors, or participates in a program that purchases or offers to purchase firearms with the intent to:

               (1) remove firearms from circulation;

               (2) reduce the number of firearms owned by civilians;

         or

               (3) allow individuals to sell firearms without fear of

         criminal prosecution.