Oakland’s recent gun buyback was especially ridiculous. The police offered up to $250 for a gun "no questions asked, no ID required." The first people in line? Two gun dealers from Reno with 60 cheap handguns. Fortunately the buyback did manage to get some guns off the street, too bad they were turned in by a bunch of senior citizens from an assisted living facility. Whew, the streets are safe at last.

Even putting aside the obvious nonsense, gun buybacks simply don’t work. In technical terms the supply of guns to Oakland is perfectly elastic so buybacks won’t reduce the number of guns in Oakland. Here is an analogy from my op-ed in the Oakland Tribune.