To Live And Die In L.A.
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck holds up a rocket launcher turned in during a weekend gun-buyback program in the city. The haul also included 791 handguns, 527 rifles and 302 shotguns — less than what usually is turned in. A supermarket chain donated $200,000 in gift cards to be given out in exchange for the weapons.
(Source)
Oh.. wait… TRAINER. *facepalm* Stellar police work Charlie. How embarrassing. Is that an inert AT4?
They always flaunt those haul numbers like it’s some massive victory, but I wonder how many of the bought back guns were actually airsoft or 40 year old throwaway guns that don’t even work.
Thoughts?
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I want to go stand out in front of one of those buy backs with a wad of cash. You know there are some stupid people who probably threw away grandpas WWII luger or M1 Garand.
People actually do that in Portland Oregon.
Worse. I nearly popped a gasket when I read about a recent buyback in Toronto known as the Pistols for Pixels campaign, where you trade in a gun for a cheap-ass digital camera.
Some 90 year old hag traded in her husband’s bring-back WWI Luger.
For a cheap Sony point-and-shoot.
*facepalm* If they get rid of the handgun registry there you could camp out next time with a few grand in your pocket and go home with some more guns to add to your collection.
Most of the guns are stolen by people waiting for a buyback so they can get quick cash for drugs. It’s really pathetic to see our tax money used for such purposes.
My thoughts exactly. And below the point was made that some of these items are potential evidence.
Does anyone know what they will do with these weapons? I mean, Komiefornia is in real bad shape financially, so maybe they could sell these out of state on the open market to help balance the budget??
Surely this isn’t one of the deals where they just throw everything into a cauldron of molten steel, right?
Crusher. *shudder*
The state is too cheap to melt them down directly. They have a huge hydraulic press that they load them into, smash them flat as a pancake, and sell them as scrap.
I could never do that job, too horrible!
they will take them and sell them to the mexican drug cartels like they did in operation fast and the furious.
i kinda want to grab a stack of business cards for a nearby FFL and stand around with a book of gun values. at one of these things “Oh you have a Boito 12ga? this shit could fetch as high as $300.”
I hate these programs. It’s the firearms equivalent to cash for clunkers. Just the government uselessly spending money. As stated in some of the previous comments, there are probably some nice historic/valuable guns being destroyed too.
I like the idea of getting some airsoft guns and showing up. I’m sure the idiots running the operation wouldn’t know the difference. I wonder how much I can get inert RPGs of gunbroker for???
Unfortunately inert RPGs are insanely expensive (around $800). I used to want one. But I guess if you own one, it’s probably only a matter of time until the police mistakenly kill you.
If that’s a trainer AT4 it probably is the one that shoots 9mm tracer rounds, not just an empty tube.
That’s what I was thinking too. The inert dummies (aka empties) I have seen so far usually have blue tape and/or “INERT” stenciled on it, not “TRAINER”. TRAINER should be the M287 converted one.
You’re right that it is an M287 9mm training model, but I’d be willing to bet that at this point it’s effectively just an empty tube. The 9mm apparatus inside is removable, and I’m sure is serial numbered and catalogued as a sensitive item by the Army. I have an empty M287 tube somewhere; I’m probably not supposed to have it, but oh well!
Oh, and it doesn’t look like anyone else has mentioned it, but the article refers to it as a “rocket launcher.” It’s not; it’s a recoilless weapon. When you fire one there’s no “whoosh” as the rocket takes off; there’s a big BANG, because you just fired a big gun that uses the backblast to balance the recoil. I’m amazed that reporters would fuck something like that up!
I doubt it’s a M287, looks like a fired round relegated to field handling trainer. Very doubt the serial numbered sub calibre system is in place.
no it’s not the one that shoots 9mm tracer rounds… it is an expended round converted to trainer state by removing the internal bar (which is amazingly easy)… notice they were careful to never show the rear or front of the tube directly…
I may or may not know of film industry folks that have turned in piles of crap rifles sitting in their warehouses for a quick $1200 in groceries.
LA is ridiculous.
hahah that’s awesome. Good for them for capitalizing on a city’s stupid idea.
That looks like an expended tube, the color band indicates an HE antitank round. It’s in really good shape, the sights are still intact. I think the actual trainiers have a blue band.
there are 3 color code bands, and the 9mm trainer has no band…
Black and yellow = HE
Gold/yellow =inert trainer
Blue= display/weighted trainer
ROFL at LAPD’s valiant actions of taking a training AT4 out of the wrong hands.. THANK GOD for americas finest!
Please refrain from using the anti-rights lobbies terminology of “buy-back”. You can’t buy something back that doesn’t belong to you in the first place. Buy-up would probably be a much better term.
Anyway. yeah fail
Maybe he took on purpose a fake/inert tube to bring in front of the public, because he didn’t want to take any chance…
But this kind of marketing operation is a damn waste of good, valuable and sometimes rare guns that will be trashed for nothing…
… or, worse, crime evidence that will now be destroyed and the scumbag who used it to hurt a law-abiding citizen will be able to walk away scot-free.
Gun “Buy-Backs” are a travesty of justice, history, and grammar (you cannot “buy back” what you never owned before), and should be abolished.
True about the crime evidence. I’m sure most of those guns end up at the bottom of a river though, unless the criminal is incredibly stupid.
Aren’t most criminals incredibly stupid?
True, I suppose that kind of criminal is stupid almost all the time.
Actually they did a study and most criminals have an IQ around 90 which makes them only slightly stupid. I believe the scientific term is ‘Dangerously Stupid’.
http://law.jrank.org/pages/1363/Intelligence-Crime-Measuring-size-IQ-crime-correlation.html
These “buy back” programs boil my blood. They boast about getting guns off the street. In reality, they are getting guns out of old lady basements and junk guns out the of the garbage heap. These publicity stunts do NOTHING to actually get guns out of the hands of criminals. They can’t possibly think that bangers are going to be turning in their “guages” and “gats” for a $50 gift card to some grocery store. Pathetic.
Do you think the guy has started to grow a mustache BEFORE or AFTER the “Blue Bloods” show with Tom Selleck as chief of NYPD (and his mustache as co-chief of NYPD)?
I need a buy back around here. I have a couple of clunkers that need to go, just not to anyone who might shoot them.
If rocket launchers, grenades, and other such NFA-restricted items are so common that they show up in gun buy-ups to be paraded for the cameras by our moral and ethical superiors (just ask them, they’ll tell you it’s so!),
Why don’t I hear about said weapons being used in crimes?
I live in the Phoenix Metro area: We’re the #2 city in the world for kidnapping, according to these maroons, I should hear explosions outside my window like it was Ramadan in the Talmund.
Instead, I’m hearing sparrows chirp.
Something is wrong with their narrative…
+1 Kevin.
Hey, they sell those expended AT4 tubes at the marine recruitment center near my job =P
I saw that in the WSJ and I didn’t take the time to really look at it, but I have a feeling it was a training tube.
LAPD, one step ahead of the DC police…but just one.
I hate buy backs, totally useless. I always think of the Family Matters episode where they give you a public service announcment suggesting you to hand in your firearms. lol
I bet someone involved with the buy-back bought a the AT-4 off of ebay or the like, and brought it down JUST to get the press..
Where I live they give out $100 grocery gift cards.
1) Buy used hi-point 9mm for $50.
2) Trade in for $100 grocery gift card.
3) PROFIT!!!
Profit is step #4….. don’t ask me what step #3 is though
Hahahahaha!
Sadly I have seen these on sale down off Santa Monica BLVD and Vine in Hollywood for $150 each… they probably gave the guy $200 or more for this. The M72 LAW training tube they showed on the CNN video was very obviously a trainer… there was no band whatsoever on it…
For those of you who are worried that valuable war relics (Lugers, P-38’s, etc.) being lost to eternity in a scrap heap, worry no more. That’s not where the “good stuff” ends up. They get picked through by the benevolent police officers who selflessly give of their precious day off by volunteering to work at the event. Then the best ones go home with them.
See, a good share of cops are crooked. Just like the one you see in the image above. He holds an empty, harmless fiberglass tube above his head, purposely turned so that the word “Trainer” stenciled on the side of it is pointing up and can’t be seen by most of the cameras or onlookers. Then, with a devious grin (zoom in and read the facial expression, like they do to us) he purposefully lies to the public. So if the man at the top of the food chain sees no moral problem with lying to the public, then what do you suppose the ones further down the food chain are like? Sure, there are a few decent cops. I’ve met a few good ones. But there are usually more crooked ones than good ones in a department. Maybe it’s just a little misuse of power, like turning on their siren just long enough to get through traffic and pull into McDonald’s (I saw it just 2 days ago). But hey, they are important, and they only get a limited amount of time to eat their lunch, right? Next thing you know, they are making up moral excuses for stealing guns out of the evidence locker (I know cops who have done that too). But hey, they just don’t get paid enough, do they? They need personal firearms to train with, and they are just so expensive! So just steal a “free” gun, show up at the police-only firing range, and shoot up the “free” ammo given to them at the range. And yet half of them still barely hit the target (seen it, seen it, seen it–argue and whine all you want about it, I know what I have seen time after time.)
So don’t you worry one little bit. Those really nice guns aren’t headed from the scrap heap. And don’t worry, the city will still be safe! They are going into the “safe” hands of our “trusted” police officers!
I honestly wish what I just wrote was all fabricated. I TRULY do. But I’m sure you’ve seen it for yourselves.
That’s not a trainer it has a black and yellow band which means it had a rocket it’s obviously empty solid yellow means trainer and no band is a 9mm tracer trainer