Part of the problem is that it is hard to keep up with the new people being added to the list all the time. Last year, agents conducted 7,573 investigations and seized 3,286 firearms. At the same time, 7,031 gun owners were newly flagged. The state has hired 18 additional agents to bolster its 33-person unit, and has been trying to staff up more.The results so far are simply not good enough, say Republican members of the state Senate, who note that 40 percent of the $24 million has already been spent. They are seeking an oversight hearing to investigate where all the money went and why the backlog is still so large.
Source: California discovers it’s really expensive to confiscate people’s guns – The Washington Post
If my numbers are right, the State of California spent 9.6 million dollars to confiscate 3,286 guns. That comes to $2,921 per gun, that is Custom 1911 or Daniel Defense AR prices for maybe Glocks or even Hi-Points carbines!
Dear California’s Department of Justice, I have an idea: Send the violators a letter saying you are willing to pay…let’s say $1,500 per gun that has to be confiscated anyway. You tell them to come to any police station, surrender the guns and they will be issued a voucher redeemable at any bank for the value of the bounty. Right there I cut 50% of your expenses.
You are very welcome.
$1,500 or top market (not auction) value, whichever is greater. Admittedly most folks do not have a gun worth $1,500 someone out there may have a real collector or high-end fancy gun. The Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment is just as important as not being forced to incriminate yourself.
stay safe.
You mean the gun tragically lost during a boating accident? 😉
[…] California is learning that gun confiscation is really really expensive. If they think it’s expensive […]
The question is not the cost of confiscating the gun versus its market price; it’s the cost of the gun versus the cost of what crimes the owner might commit with it.
A crappy Phoenix Arms .22 costs about $125. What would taking it away from a paranoid meth head be worth?
(I hope no one is going to argue there is no point in even trying to keep guns out of the hands of known criminals and lunatics.)
This gun owners in particular? We would be talking a very low cost. These are registered weapons whose owners have suddenly be deemed by the State of California as unfit (maybe they went an got mental health care sometime in their lives) and not violent criminals who do not have to register weapons or do so.
I, for one, am not convinced that the effort involved in keeping guns out of the hands of known criminals and lunatics is worth it.
For one thing, there’s an awful lot of crimes that can be committed; why the automatic assumption that because someone has committed such a crime (even most “felonies”, considering how so many things are becoming felonies these days)?
For another thing, what does it mean to be a “lunatic”? I am aware of schizophrenics who could probably be trusted with guns, and certainly people who have depression, but have it under control via medication, shouldn’t be forbidden to carry weapons.
Finally, spending $3,000 to take that gun away from the paranoid meth head might *not* be worth it at all: if we’re doing this via gun buy-back, then we’re only encouraging that meth head to find such guns for buy-back purposes; if we’re talking about confiscation, then chances are that this meth-head is already forbidden from owning guns in the first place, so there’s no way we’re going to find out that he has the gun…
So, yeah, it’s not unreasonable to ask if confiscating guns at the rate of $3,000/gun is worthwhile, even if we’re talking about getting the guns out of the hands of “criminals” and “lunatics”.