It’s hard, sometimes, not to laugh at the stupid things that anti-2A activists do. Especially when those activists are government bureaucrats. But you have my permission to laugh about today’s story. I sure did.

So, here’s the scenario: anti-2A bureaucrats in Oakland, California (land of the oppressed) decided that the way to reduce gun violence was to do what they so often try to do: blame the gun for gun crime and offer to buy guns from people to get those guns off of the streets.

Now, if you have even the most basic understanding of human behavior and economics (specifically supply and demand), then, you know what happens when a government gives an incentive to do something: it doesn’t go away. So, what happens when a government offers to buy guns from anyone under the (mistaken) assumption that the guns are to blame for the violence and that getting rid of the guns will reduce violence? People find ways to get objects that are just “gun-like” enough to collect the payout from the government. And guns are still on the streets.

But wait! There’s more! In their efforts to get guns off of the streets, the anti-2A bureaucrats increased gun sales, too, and you’ll laugh at the irony when you find out where those sales happened. You can watch the short video from ReasonTV below.

Now, this video isn’t a comedy video. This isn’t fiction. It actually happened.

The Oakland government managed to make gun dealers more profitable by paying for guns that the dealers couldn’t sell. Which means that dealers could, then, turn around and buy guns that they could sell.

Oh, and the immediate increase in gun sales that I mentioned earlier: Did you get where that happened? Yes, it happened in the line of people wanting to sell guns to the city of Oakland.

So, not only did Oakland not get guns off of the streets, they wasted taxpayers’ money paying for this (and paying the payroll for people to be at the buyback sites), and they increased the profitability of some gun dealers and increased gun sales on site at the gun buy back.

What a complete failure.

And it all comes down to the complete lack of understanding of human nature that is part and parcel of anti-2A thinking. Will they never learn?