For the life of me I can’t figure out the rationale behind this:
The Tucson Police Department also held a gun buyback Tuesday. Police want to destroy the 206 firearms turned in to them. But the National Rifle Association says that would violate Arizona law.
[…]
Todd Rathner, an Arizona lobbyist and a national board member of the NRA, may sue. He has no problem with the gun buyback, but he does have a problem with the fate of the guns once police take possession of them.
“We do believe that it is illegal for them to destroy those guns,” he says.
Rathner says Arizona state law forces local governments to sell seized or abandoned property to the highest bidder.
Of course, these guns were neither “seized” or “abandoned” but, hey, who cares! They are killing guns, people!
Josh Marshall seems perplexed, as well:
But now an NRA boardmember in Arizona is taking it to a whole new level — claiming the guns themselves have rights.
Todd Rathner is threatening to sue Tucson police over yesterday’s gun buyback program, saying they have no right to destroy the guns themselves, despite the fact that the owners sold them ($50 gift certificate per gun) to the police to destroy them. In other words, the guns — not the people who have a right to own them — but the guns themselves, i.e., the metal and miscellaneous composites that make up the firearm, now have rights.
It’s like a Star Trek episode. Guns are sentient beings?