Somebody was quoted as saying that gun buyback programs are like trying to empty the Pacific Ocean with a bucket.  Yes, this is nuts, and stupid.  Most of all, this is the showy crest of a wall of anti-intellectualism that threatens to down our previously mighty country.

People are very excited about gun buyback programs right now.  Me, I never owned a gun.  Although, some people have told me I should given the dangerous situations I too often turn up in.  As I say this, I look down at a scar on the inner aspect of my left elbow.  A scar I sustained when a drunk in a northern French emergency room attacked me with a piece of broken glass.  It is, of course, paler and harder to find than when a young surgeon colleague came from home to close it with tiny little faerie-like stitches.  No guns around, of course.  I learned before that scar, early in my French training, that if you owned a gun — and especially if you didn’t feel very secure with it — it was likely to be turned about and used on you.  Me.  The owner. The “good guy.” Read more on The Cockeyed Logic of Gun Buybacks…