May 05, 2013 10:15 AM UTC

Arizona Passes "Gun Safety Legislation"--Literally

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• by: Colorado Pols

AP reports via the Durango Herald from our caddy-corner neighbors to the southwest:

Just days after Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law designed to hinder police participation in gun-buyback events, the city of Phoenix on Saturday held the first of three buybacks that organizers are calling the largest effort of its kind in the state’s history.

The law Brewer signed April 29 takes effect this summer and requires cities and counties to sell surrendered weapons instead of destroying them.

That basically bars police and supporters of the events from accomplishing their key goal, cutting the number of guns on the streets, and police likely would not participate…

This is, safe to say, one of the stranger conservative "backlashes" against the push for gun safety laws around the country. The new Arizona law in question, House Bill 2455, still allows police agencies to conduct firearms buyback programs, but they wouldn't be allowed to destroy the guns afterward as has always been the objective. Under this law, the weapons have to be sold back into the market. Given that the "buyback" system is entirely voluntary for all parties, the requirement that the guns not be destroyed seems based solely on an emotional attachment to guns–like vegetarians trying to shut down a meatpacking plant.

Opponents claim the law, in addition to being a stupendously bad idea, is shot full of loopholes too.

“I could do one through law enforcement, through (Tucson police), tomorrow and put a price tag of $100,000 on them, and no one would bid on them so they’d sit in storage,” [Tucson city councilman Steve] Kozachik said Friday. “Or, in the alternative, I could put a price on them of a penny and sell them to an artist who would melt them down and make them into art.

“They’ve really achieved nothing but made fools of themselves,” he said of the law’s backers.

Obviously, Arizona's new law is a 180-degree opposite from the gun safety bills we have passed in Colorado this year. In a state dominated by Republicans at all levels, "gun safety" apparently means, literally, safety for guns–at the direct expense of public safety, not to mention the wholesale disregard of the opinion of law enforcement. Arizona's nutty new law couldn't stand out in starker contrast to the path our state has chosen on gun safety, and we expect most well-adjusted adults will be fine with that.