Freelance Star Gets it Right

The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star has a great editorial this morning about Delegate Mark Cole's HB 2528 - the bill aimed at requiring localities that engage in "compensated confiscation" schemes to sell any firearms taken in through the "buy backs" to sell them to an FFL. Says the FFS:

The crucial fact is that there is no evidence that the programs reduce crime. Criminals don't want to undersell the tools of their trade any more than a carpenter wants to part with a favorite saw.

If only cities like Newport News, Washington DC and Chicago understood this. But the FFL knows the real purpose of these schemes and as much as says so - it's to get all guns out of the hands of citizens, and offer them a bribe to do so. The FFL however applied the same logic to HB 2538 that Delegate Cole did to the Washington Times earlier this week:

Why should a piece of property worth two or three hundred dollars be destroyed when a city could sell it to recoup--or perhaps more than recoup--what it paid for the item?

Kudos to the Free Lance-Star for applying common sense. Hopefully, the State Senate will do the same when it takes up the bill later this month.