1,000 Guns

Yay. They've taken 1,000 guns off the streets of Boston. How absolutely lovely a round number that is! How very nice and round and PR-rific is that number! There's something crooked in such an even number. But I'm sure it's better than "993!" or "Well, we really got 1,012 guns, but we only had 1,000 gift cards."

The Boston Globe wrote: The 1,000 guns, Menino said, represented ``1,000 potential lives that were saved. The firearms we received were exactly the type of firearms we wanted. They can no longer cause harm to any of Boston's residents."

What the hell does "exactly the type of firearms we wanted" mean? Are they glad the Minutemen weren't handing in their muskets? I'm reading it more like "The guns came from exactly the people we wanted," read: Dorchester and Roxbury residents. Violence is so out of control there, I am glad something, anything - however PR-stuntish and questionably impactful it is - is being done. However, what else is being done? Things are at a tipping point and the city doesn't seem to care. I mean, when the local minister decides after much thought and years of living in the community he serves to move to the suburbs because he'd rather keep his teenage son alive than make a point, there is a problem.

So, after all this, the police have run the serial numbers and identified a few of the 1,000 guns with minor crimes but no homicides. One thousand guns and not a major crime. Does that give any else a chilly feeling in their spine? I'm probably just being cynical but I can't help but think that these gun buy-back programs are like canned food drives where people reach into the back of their cabinet, skipping over the Le Sueur Early June Peas and the Chunky Chicken Corn Chowder and throw a few dented cans of chick peas toward the fight. Or any "drive" for that matter. Seems to me Menino collected a bunch of acid-washed jeans and B. U. M. equipment sweatshirts. The good stuff is still out there.