(September 1, 1999) Crime now pays at a rate of $100 per gun, as police use confiscated cash to buy guns from DC residents. (You know, where legal handguns don't exist anymore.) No questions asked, no risk of arrest trying to sell goods to a fence, and since rightful owners of stolen property won't ever be contacted, thieves won't be linked to a crime.

Big government can't come into our homes to take our guns directly yet, so instead it's using subcontractors. DC has created a system where "confiscation" will be done by miscreants, effectively working as agents on behalf of police and paid by the piece. It's a tight little system: cash goes from police to small-time addicts and thieves (in payment for our guns) then to big-time drug dealers (for illegal narcotics), then back to police once it's confiscated for reuse in another gun buyback. Police acknowledge they intend to step up cash forfeiture proceedings in order to replenish their coffers following this latest payout.

Yes, this is a "Maryland thing." Honest gun owners in Prince Georges and Montgomery Counties -- some of them personal friends of this writer -- have lost whole gun collections to home burglaries in recent months. How many of their guns -- now tallied as "crime guns" in the count maintained by the Feds -- were out on display for the Police photo-ops over the last week? Police know, but Maryland residents won't find out. DC will destroy all guns they bought after checking their ballistics against forensic evidence collected at crime scenes. This goes for low-end, affordable guns up to a widely reported $30,000 antique Luger, whose loss must have devastated some collector.

How many homes were violated in Maryland by dopeheads on a mission from DC police? Was anyone injured in a home invasion by thugs in search of no-questions-asked gun money? Was one of these guns used to kill a cop? Is anyone paying attention to spikes in short term crime rates with all this fresh no-questions-asked cash on the streets of DC? Honest citizens whose lawfully-owned property serves as bait for the buybacks deserve answers.