Topline: The San Antonio Police Department’s latest safety campaign spent over $127,000 to coax residents’ guns out of their hands, and ended up purchasing toy and BB guns along the way.
Key facts: San Antonio’s first-ever gun buyback program paid Texans to give up their firearms, collecting 906 guns in exchange for up to $300 of credit at H-E-B grocery store.
The event was “never intended to lower crime” but to “help people feel safe, and to reduce the number of weapons that could get into circulation that could be used for crime,” according to Councilman and mayoral candidate John Courage, News 4 San Antonio reported.
But records obtained by the TV station revealed that the police paid for three toy guns and 16 pellet guns.
Those weapons are the sort that would shoot Ralphie’s eye out in “A Christmas Story,” not the kind that police need to spend six figures to protect the public from.
Courage explained that “anything that even looks like the gun can be a danger to people in the public,” because kids could injure themselves or scare others while trying to commit a crime with a toy gun.
The program had a stated budget of $100,000, but News 4 found that it actually cost tens of thousands more than that. The 51 police officers working the event were also paid $27,333 in salary, including overtime.
The police destroyed all the firearms, including some with high resale value or with historical significance.
Courage said he hoped to continue the program in the future.
Background: San Antonio might be paying to destroy guns, but that doesn’t mean the city hasn’t been spending money on its own weaponry.
The city has spent $222,800 at Bailey’s Firearms Country since 2019, according to records at OpenTheBooks.com.
San Antonio police officers are also highly compensated, with some salaries approaching $300,000 in 2022. That year, 106 people in the city made more than $200,000; 46 of them were police officers.
Supporting quote: "If we help people go out and buy a Thanksgiving dinner for their family, or allowed them to go out and buy toys for their grandchildren or children at Christmas time, that's a great return on the investment of no longer keeping something in your home that you didn't want that might - you might feel as unsafe," Courage said.
Critical quote: "Whether it was John Courage saying it was just for people to feel better, or it was even the Chief of Police saying that it's a program that doesn't work - a program that doesn't work shouldn't be the recipient of government funds," mayoral candidate Brandon Herrera said. "It shouldn't be what the city is paying for."
Summary: The Second Amendment doesn’t explicitly guarantee the right to bear toy guns, but common sense should have been enough to guide the San Antonio police in this scenario.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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