(info may be here already, if so, my apologies)

http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0007/talkingpoints2.html

A real buyback

“Every gun turned in through a buyback program means potentially one less tragedy,” President Bill Clinton declared at a September 9, 1999 White House photo-op with mayors and police chiefs. Clinton was announcing that the Department of Housing and Urban Development would be allocating $15 million to buy up to 300,000 guns from private citizens.

Unfortunately, such programs have serious flaws. For instance, gun buyback programs have made no attempt to round up the guns of one of the most aggressive groups in society: Federal lawmen.

However, after the Elian Gonzalez raid, it is clearly time to reduce the number of machine guns in the hands of the INS, the Border Patrol and other federal law enforcement agencies.

In the now-famous photograph, a Border Patrol agent pointed an HK MP-5 toward a 6-year-old boy and his fisherman rescuer. The HK fires 800 rounds a minute. Most experts agree that, when carrying out a nighttime raid on a home with unarmed men, women and children, weapons firing only 700 rounds a minute are sufficient.

– James Bovard, Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2000