Gun program needed time
Friday, July 27, 2001
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
Of the nearly $2 trillion federal budget, the sum of $15 million -- for police departments to buy guns in and around public housing projects -- isn't much. The 20,000 guns bought with that amount have hardly made a dent in the country's arsenal of 200 million firearms.
But what the Buyback America program at the Department of Housing and Urban Development lacked in size and longevity it more than made up for in controversy.
Almost from the day former President Clinton announced the program in September 1999, it became a punching bag for gun control opponents. Had these guns really been used in crimes? Would the strategy lower the death rate from firearms? Why not put the money into enforcing existing laws?
All decent questions but hardly answerable until the program had been around awhile. That wasn't to be.
It's not surprising that the Bush administration has decided to eliminate the not-quite 2-year-old program. Though popular with many police chiefs, it wasn't popular with the NRA, whose candidate inherited the White House from Clinton.
While reasonable people can disagree about whether the program would ever have achieved its aim -- a danger-free environment for people who have nowhere else to live -- the official comments that accompanied the announcement of its termination were dead wrong.
"This is clearly not part of the core mission of HUD," a spokeswoman said, adding that individual housing authorities could still offer the program if they paid for it with their own money.
If guaranteeing a safe home to poor families, the elderly and the disabled isn't HUD's primary -- if not overarching -- goal, then the mission statement needs to be rewritten. HUD is supposed to offer a temporary safety net -- in all connotations of that term.
Progressive strategies such as Buyback America have helped public-housing residents, in partnership with law enforcement and social service agencies, make their communities livable again after several decades in which gangs and drugs held sway.
Further, it's unlikely that the 100 housing authorities that eagerly participated in the program will be able to continue it in light of the fact that the source of funds at HUD, the Drug Elimination Program, also is scheduled for termination.
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