Activist ‘Aghast’ Gun Buybacks Feeding Secondary Arms Market

A gun control activist was “aghast” and dismayed to learn that the burgeoning blue-city gun buyback culture is actually feeding a secondary arms and gun parts market.

The New York Times focused on a recent gun buyback in Flint, Michigan, noting that Gunbusters, a Missouri company, was contracted to handle the weapons which were surrendered.

According to the NYT, “[Gunbusters] has taken in more than 200,000 firearms over the past decade from about 950 police agencies around the country, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to St. Louis to Hartford, Vermont.”

However, Gunbusters does not necessarily destroy the firearm which is handed over at these buybacks. Rather, it often destroys the part on which the serial number is located, then sells the remaining gun parts on the gun parts market. As a result, “Gunbusters and its five licensees across the country, for example, recently averaged more than $90,000 a week in combined online sales of hundreds of disassembled guns from government clients.”

Upon learning of the way the buybacks feed a burgeoning secondary gun market, Detroit’s Rev. Chris Yaw said he was “aghast and appalled.”

He added, “It tells me that our society is set up really well for buying and selling guns, but it’s not set up very well for disposing of them.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.