Fox News Discovers Private Buyers

Private collectors with some antique rifles obtained at a Phoenix turn in event in 2013

Perry Chiaramonte of Fox News deserves some credit for going beyond the usual media template of "Guns Bad".   In an article published on 15 January, he did some homework and found a growing response to the political theater of gun "buy backs.     The article gives considerable space to the trend of private collectors attending the turn in events (they cannot really be "buy backs", because the people buying the guns never owned them before), and buying desirable guns rather than see them destroyed for no reason.

He quotes author Dean Weingarten on the phenomena:

Gun blogger Dean Weingarten, who hosts a website called Gunwatch, said a collector who attended a recent buyback event in College Park, Ga., bought several valuable guns that would have otherwise been destroyed, including what is believed to be an antique flintlock pistol. Weingarten says competition from collectors should be encouraged.

"It stretches the turn-in budget so that more guns can be taken off the street," he wrote. "It helps keep fearful widows from being defrauded of most of the market value of the gun they are turning in. It prevents valuable assets from being destroyed by bureaucratic inflexibility. It is a win-win-win situation."

 Later on, perhaps in order to salvage some political correctness, he coins a phrase that I have not seen before, and do not know what it means: "rogue buyer".

But the rogue buyers are not always welcome at the events, and they don't always offer a fair deal, according to Tom Knox, president of the National Automatic Pistol Collectors Association.

 It is hard to understand why Tom Knox would want valuable collector items destroyed, rather than have a private purchaser pay more for them and keep them available for the collector community, but that is what he seems to be saying.

This P38, obtained at a turn in event, was one of the last produced before the German factory was overrun by the allies.  The cut down holster was a common field modification by American troops.

It is hard to see why anyone would object to collectors preventing valuable and historical items from being destroyed for symbolic purposes.  We condemned the Taliban for destroying the Buddha statues.

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch