Money for Guns

Didn't we mention this just yesterday?

• Hours after Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a $250,000 gun buyback program on Monday, a downstate gun-rights advocate promised to come to Chicago to exploit it.
  
  “We will be delighted to transact business once more with do-gooders in Chicago,” John Boch, executive director of Champaign-based Guns Save Life, said Monday.
  
  Guns Save Life used Chicago’s 2012 gun buyback to embarrass city officials. That year, members said they turned in about 60 guns — some of them rusty and inoperable.
  
  They received $100 MasterCard gift cards for each gun, which they used to buy ammunition for a National Rifle Association youth camp in Bloomington and bolt-action rifles to give away to campers.
  
  Suburban Chicago gun dealers also took advantage of the no-questions-asked policy of the 2012 buyback to unload inventory worth less than $100 in exchange for the $100 cards, sources said.
  
  At the time, city officials angrily accused Guns Save Life of abusing a program intended to take guns off the streets of Chicago and reduce violence. But Boch says the group was simply demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the program.
  
  “Tell the mayor we need substance over symbolism,” he said Monday.

As members of these organizations, we'd also extend our thanks to the mayor and the gullible taxpayers/corporations coming up with this money. It shall be put to good use.

UPDATE: Not so fast! Rahm is ready for so-called "scammers:"

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel says officials are ready for activists who want to thwart the city’s gun buyback program, reports WBBM [...]
  
  Mayor Emanuel says officials and community leaders will make sure that gun rights advocates don’t scam the weapons buyback program by turning in worthless guns for gift cards. The Champaign-based group Guns Save Life has threatened to turn in worthless, inoperable guns.
  
  “One of the things we did to redesign it is to work through our church leaders to make sure it’s exactly taking guns that we think need to get off the street off the streets,” Emanuel said. “I know where I stand. I stand with the residents, yesterday as well as last night, who want to see police on the street and getting both guns and kids off the street.”

And how exactly are the churches going to do this? Because churches are experts on guns. And the Department has already stated there will be no checking of ID's and pretty much no questions asked. It's not like they're setting up a portable firing range to test these things.

Are they going to discriminate against white people bringing in guns? Because we know lots of black people who belong to these groups. Are they going to only put the money in black neighborhoods? That might appear to be racist against brown and white people, after all, they're victims of crime, too. Oh wait...is Rahm only putting the quarter million in neighborhoods hardest hit by violence? Now we're getting closer to the problem that no one speaks about, but still claims is racist.

Give it up Rahm. One way or the other, you're going to give a bunch of this money to people who use it to educate people as to gun rights, sharpen their gun skills, or support gun camps for kids.