I'm surprised Mr. Codrea didn't label this one "We're the Only Ones Baiting and Switching Enough"...
Mark DeAngelis heard that Suffolk County was giving people $200 gift cards to turn in illegal handguns last weekend, so he looked behind a rafter in a warehouse he rents and found a revolver he stashed there 20 years ago, he said.
He called Suffolk's Third Precinct in Bay Shore, confirmed that they were still doing the program and then drove there and turned over the gun, he said.
But after he handed the gun to the officer, he said he got bad news: There was no money left.
"He basically said, 'You just gave me an illegal handgun. We're out of money. Do you have a problem with that?'" said DeAngelis, 43, of Patchogue, who said he bought the gun to get it out of the hands of a man he considered dangerous.
You could also call it another validation of the Steve Wariner truth, "play with the fire and you're gonna get burned." Or yet another definition of the term "Faustian bargain." After all, when you give the cops your ID, who's to say they won't keep it for whatever purpose? It's one thing to turn in a so-called "illegal handgun" anonymously, but to have your name tied to that gun in any way, especially in a liberty-deficient rathole like metro New York, would be nothing but bad. Try as I may though, I can't muster up a shred of sympathy for these folks either. For one they should have had some idea of who they were dealing with, and for two, they were stupid for giving up their own guns. I know I have a different mindset than many — i.e., being from Texas I can't fathom their concept of "illegal guns," and for another I can't for the life of me understand why they'd get rid of them for those fire-sale prices — but it's just what I think and I can't make any apologies for that.
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