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GOP Foes Won't Stop $50 Gun
Buy-Back Plan, Clinton Says
Written by James Dao - THE NEW YORK TIMES
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Gunnery Network
A Network Viking Web Production
GOP Foes Won't Stop $50 Gun
Buy-Back Plan, Clinton Says
Written by James Dao - THE NEW YORK TIMES
| CLEVELAND - Defying congressional Republicans, the Clinton administration says that it will continue paying local governments to buy back guns from private owners despite orders from House budget appropriators to end the program. Known as Buyback America, the $15 million program is intended to reduce gun violence in cities, particularly around public housing projects, by helping police and housing authorities buy firearms for about $50 each, with no questions asked. Since President Clinton unveiled the program last September, 70 cities, including San Francisco, Hartford, Conn., Atlanta, Baltimore, Newark, N.J., and Houston have spent $3.5 million to buy more than 17,300 guns, most of which have been destroyed. But from its inception, the program has been sharply criticized by the National Rifle Association and by opponents of gun control in Congress, as a waste of money that does little to take guns from criminals. In June, Rep. James Walsh, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo to stop financing the program. In a letter to Cuomo, Walsh said existing law did not authorize such spending, a position supported by the General Accounting Office, a nonpartisan congressional research agency. Programs in at leas the gun lobby and other opponents of common-sense gun safety measures continue to challenge this initiative," Clinton says in the statement. "Congress should put the public safety interests of American families above those of the gun lobby and support these efforts instead of working to undermine them." Walsh denied that he had been pressured by the NRA or its allies in Congress. |
