Compensated Confiscation

Gun Buyback Schemes, what my friend Cam Edwards calls "Compensated Confiscation" are being turned on their head, and rightly so, at Virginia's General Assembly. The House Militia, Police and Public Safety Committee on Friday reported out HB 2528, Delegate Mark Cole's bill that requires that no locality may participate in any program in which individuals are given a thing of value in exchange for surrendering a firearm to the locality unless the governing body of the locality has enacted an ordinance authorizing the buy back program of the locality. In addition, and this is the best part, the bill requires that any firearms taken through a buy back program, must be sold by public auction, or sealed bids, to a licensed dealer.

Localities are screaming foul - saying it undercuts the purpose of the compensated confiscation - getting guns off the streets. But Delegate Cole told the Washington Times that the bill could provide money for cash-strapped localities and police departments while also making sure the guns do not fall into the wrong hands.

Says Cole, "Some of them are valuable, and I think it's kind of a waste of taxpayer funds to just destroy those."

Good for Delegate Cole. Be sure to call you Delegate and ask him or her to support the bill when it comes up for a vote on the floor Monday.