Rocket Launchers?

(Editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovich and published 12/28/12 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)

Last Monday I posted on the successful gun buy-back by authorities in San Diego.  In that post I mentioned that the City of Los Angeles had bumped its gun buy-back from Mothers Day to 12/26/12.  Well, the results are in.  The Los Angeles event also was an astounding success.

A one-day gun buyback event in Los Angeles on Wednesday gathered 2,037 firearms, including 75 assault weapons and two rocket launchers, officials said. The total was nearly 400 more weapons than were collected in a similar buyback earlier this year. ...

Hundreds lined up in cars to get Ralphs gift cards in exchange for different types of guns. Villaraigosa said the LAPD collected 901 handguns, 698 rifles, 363 shotguns and 75 assault weapons. The weapons will be melted down.  [Emphasis added]

The deal is that the police department takes the weapons with no questions asked.  That means, unfortunately, that we won't know how those two rocket launchers were obtained by civilians or whether they had any rockets for the weaponry.  At least the weapons were turned in.

The event was such an overwhelming success that the LAPD ran out of the gift cards donated by Ralphs (a chain of grocery stores owned by Kroger).  The City Controller had to do some quick scrambling to get private donations for more.  Some of the people turning in the weapons, however, declined the gift cards and the wait involved in getting them over to the two sites.  They told the police they were just glad to get the weapons out of their homes.

I consider this all a powerful message, one that I hope that next Congress will take notice of.  I also hope that other cities will set up such events, with or without help from the federal government.