Sheriff’s deputies join faith group to encourage trading firearms for flowers

[SecularMotion]

Some Midlands homes will be showing off a traditional Easter flower this weekend in place of a firearm.

The Richland County Sheriff’s Department and the Faith Coalition on Gun Violence sponsored a Peace Lilies for Guns event Saturday at Washington Street Methodist Church in Columbia.

“If we can take even one gun off the street and that action saves a life, then this program is a success,” Sheriff Leon Lott said.

The event invited anyone with an unwanted firearm to drop it off with deputies at the church Saturday. No questions were asked, and those dropping off firearms were allowed to remain anonymous.

http://coladaily.com/2014/04/21/sheriffs-deputies-join-faith-group-to-encourage-trading-firearms-for-flowers/

[Common Sense Party]

1. Are you against separation of church and state? nt

[TupperHappy]

2. so glad i had finished my drink before reading this headline

The spit take would likely have ruined my cell phone.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

3. "If we can take even one gun off the street and that action saves a life..."

"...then this program is a success,”

I can't help but think those turning in their guns are the least likely to maliciously harm another human being.

The event invited anyone with an unwanted firearm to drop it off with deputies at the church Saturday. No questions were asked, and those dropping off firearms were allowed to remain anonymous.

Seems like a good way to get rid of evidence of a crime.

[Starboard Tack]

4. Those turning in the guns may well be unlikely to use them maliciously.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't say what happens to these firearms. If they are cycled back into circulation, then the exercise is pointless.

[Jgarrick]

5. Many of them were probably airguns or nonfunctional anyway.

[clffrdjk]

6. What happens is.

Somebody will be standing out front offering cash for any of the firearms that are worth anything, the cops will get the junk ones and a few treasures that the owner just wanted to see destroyed. Those treasures will end up in the sheriffs personal vault.

[Starboard Tack]

7. Nothing would surprise me.

Especially when it comes to guys who wear guns for a living collecting them out of the "goodness of their hearts".
The only honest way to remove unwanted guns from circulation is to melt them down, or dump them in the ocean.

[petronius]

10. Not really. It seems to me that the only actually useful purpose of an exercise like

this is to provide encouragement and opportunity to remove an unwanted firearm from a location where it may be vulnerable to theft or child access (basically, from an owner who has no interest in having it and is maybe unlikely to be storing or caring for it in a responsible way). Once that benefit is achieved, the disposition of the firearm is irrelevant (except perhaps symbolically to gun control advocates). The resale of a few hundred or thousand used firearms to approved buyers is utterly negligible in terms of overall firearms availability...

[Starboard Tack]

11. Statistically negligible, I agree.

Of course, statistics are irrelevant to the potential victim.

[petronius]

12. Negligible as in equal to zero - thinking that melting down turned-in guns would

have any effect on overall firearms availability is akin to thinking that removing one display case from the local GunMart would impact ownership rates. The presence of absence of a vanishingly tiny fraction of a percent of guns offered for sale has no bearing whatsoever on potential purchasers. But I understand the symbolic importance that some assign to 'getting them off the street' or whatever...

[Bazinga]

13. Kinda like those statistics that say I'm more likely to shoot a family member than an attacker?

Or am I only supposed to ignore statistics when it means I get rid of my guns?

[Starboard Tack]

14. Did I suggest you get rid of your guns?

That would be entirely up to you.

[blueridge3210]

8. Was there something you wanted to discuss?

Per the SOP of this group? Or is this just another one of your drive-by postings where you refuse to offer any opinion?

[Eleanors38]

9. I suppose we'll see a few Saturday night shades.