Tristan Hopper, National Post (paywalled);
The Liberals’ plan to “buy back” thousands of once-legal firearms has experienced so many cost overruns that it has so far more than $24,000 for every gun collected.
This means that for just three firearms turned over as part of the program, the federal government could have instead paid the starting salary of a full-time RCMP officer ($71,191).
For every two guns, the government could have purchased a new fully-equipped patrol car.[…]
As of the latest count from Public Safety Canada, “more than 32,000” firearms have been collected in the first six weeks of the program. But this is against the $779.8 million in costs that the program has incurred to date.
This works out to roughly $24,370 per firearm, most of which is sunk administrative costs that the original owner will never see.
Also…