To Whose Benefit?

There’s a Latin term, cui bono, which means “To whose benefit?” or “As a benefit to whom?” and is sometimes used as a legal term suggesting that the entity responsible for a crime may not be the obvious offender. For example, if a candidate for political office is using those lawn signs you sometimes see to create greater name recognition, and those signs keep disappearing, it is possible that this is just the work of vandals who like stealing signs. However, it is also possible that this is the work of a political rival who wants to frustrate the advertising campaign to his or her own benefit, or the work of the sign company, which can then sell the original candidate more signs (possibly the same ones) to their financial benefit, or even the work of poor people who use the signs for firewood to the benefit of their own comfort. It’s probably best to ask who stands to benefit the most…

If the political rival has a massive lead in the polls and has nothing to lose from a weak rival in the race, it is unlikely that the theft would benefit him or her very much. If the original political candidate has already spent his or her advertising budget and can’t buy any more signs, it’s probably not worth the theft and/or fraud charges for the sign company. And if it’s the middle of the hottest summer on record, the poor are probably not stealing firewood. But if stealing campaign signs has taken the place of shooting a member of a rival gang or spending time in jail as the act needed to find acceptance in a local gang, then it seems likely that one or more would-be gangsters are benefitting by stealing the lawn signs…

In the case of the Illinois pro-gun group that crashed the Chicago Police Department’s gun buyback event last week, I’m really not sure who benefits – or of whom they think they have taken advantage. Like must such programs, the buyback event is a no-questions-asked arrangement where anyone who shows up and turns in a gun gets a $100 Visa gift card, and anyone who turns in a BB gun or similar weapon gets $10. There have been problems in a number of cities (not just Chicago) where local gun dealers have abused these programs by buying up old, damaged weapons for less than $50 and turning them in for money, but this is the first time of which I’m aware that someone has used a buyback program to get more guns – and promote their use…

According to an article in the Sun-Times online, a group calling itself Guns Save Life gathered up a bunch of non-working, junked weapons and exchanged them for gift cards, which they plan to use in purchasing new guns (and other materials) for a National Rifle Association shooting camp. The group’s president was openly critical of the buyback program, claiming that no criminal would risk going into a police presence, and that only innocent citizens would be giving up guns in this program. On the other hand, the camp’s operations would train a new generation of gun owners on ideas like safety and responsibility. What I can’t fathom is how the pro-gun people believe that this deception benefits anyone other than themselves – and why they can’t see the harm in their actions…

Even if we accept that they’re right – that only innocent gun owners are giving up their guns – the abuse of the buyback to fund their camp operations is still taking money away from law enforcement and crime suppression in Chicago. Meanwhile, bragging about this rip-off is antagonizing everyone who isn’t already an NRA supporter, making the entire pro-gun movement look like a bunch of liars, jerks and con artists, and encouraging the folks in Chicago to both figure out to prevent such abuses in the future and also to take more anti-gun measures. It’s hard to see how this benefits either the gun lobby or Guns Save Life; one could hardly cast the pro-gun community in a worse light if they spent a year thinking about it…

It’s almost enough to make you wonder who is actually abusing who here…