Fox News Discovers Private Gun Buyers, Quotes Ammoland Contributor

By Dean Weingarten

Lawful Private Gun Buyers
Lawful Private Gun Buyers
Dean Weingarten
Dean Weingarten

Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)-  Perry Chiaramonte of Fox News deserves some credit for going beyond the usual media template of “Guns are Bad“.

In an article published on 15 January 2014, he did some homework and found a growing response to the political theater of gun “buy backs“.

The article gives considerable space to the trend of private collectors attending the turn in events (they cannot really be “buy backs”, because the people buying the guns never owned them before), and buying desirable guns rather than see them destroyed for no reason.

He quotes the author Dean Weingarten on the phenomena:

Gun blogger Dean Weingarten, who hosts a website called Gunwatch, said a collector who attended a recent buyback event in College Park, Ga., bought several valuable guns that would have otherwise been destroyed, including what is believed to be an antique flintlock pistol. Weingarten says competition from collectors should be encouraged.

“It stretches the turn-in budget so that more guns can be taken off the street,” he wrote. “It helps keep fearful widows from being defrauded of most of the market value of the gun they are turning in. It prevents valuable assets from being destroyed by bureaucratic inflexibility. It is a win-win-win situation.”

Later on, perhaps in order to salvage some political correctness, he coins a phrase that I have not seen before, and do not know what it means “rogue buyer”. 

But the rogue buyers are not always welcome at the events, and they don’t always offer a fair deal, according to Tom Knox, president of the National Automatic Pistol Collectors Association.

It is hard to understand why Tom Knox would want valuable collector items destroyed, rather than have a private purchaser pay more for them and keep them available for the collector community, but that is what he seems to be saying.

German P38 Pistol
Vintage German P38 Pistol rescued from a gun buy back

This P38, obtained at a turn in event, was one of the last produced before the German factory was overrun by the allies.  The cut down holster was a common field modification by American troops. It is hard to see why anyone would object to collectors preventing valuable and historical items from being destroyed for symbolic purposes.  We condemned the Taliban for destroying the Buddha statues.

©2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch

About Dean Weingarten;
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973.  He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.

1 Comment
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
VT Patriot

Some great buys can be had. Get there early, and offer cash for any of these historic relics that are in decent shape. Let the gun grabbers wind up giving out Walmart gift cards for the rusted out, worn out, broken pieces of junk that are useless. Don’t hesitate to inform the seller that the relic you want is an historic piece and shouldn’t be traded for a worthless gift card, and you are offering more money to get it off the street and into a historic collection.