ABC News hails hero who sold his 'toxic' firearms to the police department

Brett T. | 9:30 PM on March 22, 2018

As Twitchy told you recently, turning in your AR-15 to the police (or sawing it in half) is the new hotness. A lot more people are buying AR-15s than surrendering them to the authorities, but for some reason ABC News wanted to highlight the story of a man, Steve Hemmert, who decided to sell his firearms to the police.

Gun owner who lives near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School sells his firearms back to the Miami Police Department.

He hopes owning AR rifles becomes "toxic, like wearing fur or owning ivory." https://t.co/sSD306kIch pic.twitter.com/ufFLks2Bjt

— ABC News (@ABC) March 21, 2018

Meghan Keneally writes:

Hemmert, who was a member of the Army Reserves, is familiar with guns. He said he used to enjoy going to the shooting range, sometimes with his teenage daughter, firing two of his AR-style rifles.

But now, after the Parkland shooting, the fun is gone.

And soon, too, will his guns: Hemmert sold the guns back to the Miami Police Department this weekend as part of its gun buyback program.

“It was like a transformation between thinking of guns as kind of a fun hobby, to my God, these exact types of rifles just killed kids in my community,” he told ABC News.

…

Hemmert, who got a $250 Visa gift card for each of his guns, said he hopes that “owning ARs becomes toxic, almost like wearing fur or owning ivory. It just becomes socially unacceptable to own AR rifles.”

A voluntary gun buyback program? Sounds good to us — if you can’t handling owning firearms anymore, by all means, you shouldn’t own them.

Alternative Headline:
Man near Florida High School where deadly shooting occurred virtue signals and hopes to turn many law abiding gun owners into pariahs because of something they own that has caused no harm to others. https://t.co/Iwhqqjsg7T

— No Oath Like My Oath (@OathAlliance) March 21, 2018

This would be like me (with my clean driving record and stellar driving habits) surrendering my drivers' license and selling my car to end motor vehicle deaths because a driverless Uber struck and killed a pedestrian. https://t.co/8hTIh6l64E

— It’s Just Jenn (@JennJacques) March 21, 2018

https://twitter.com/Roger247/status/976812611139379200

Stories about people who make this decision are legitimate but so are ones about people who decide to buy a gun after new gun control measures are proposed. You don't see stories on the later in major media even though I'd be willing to bet there are far more of them. https://t.co/oquX6Lavgd

— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) March 22, 2018

Their explicit goal is to make gun owners toxic. These attempts to demonize fellow law-abiding Americans are unconscionable. https://t.co/puCilCoRwV

— Mike Morrison ?? (@MikeKMorrison) March 22, 2018

Police said the AR-15s would be “examined and possibly destroyed if found to be stolen or involved in a crime.”

Related: