Backhanded Compliment of the Week: “The CPD is awesome for buying my broken guns!”

Last Saturday, Frank “Is There a Really Easy Solution?” Jackson and the Cleveland Police Department held a Gun Buyback at the Convention Center downtown. Faced with the 119 murders the city has seen this year, the Department traded $100 gas station or supermarket gift certificates for guns turned in, no questions asked. It was an effort to get some firearms off the streets. It would seem hard to argue with that noble cause, right? Wrong. The good people at American Shooter, a right-to-bear-arms blog, found it quite easy. We can’t say we’re surprised; these are the same guys who say the Holocaust occurred because its victims had empty gun racks. “The chances of these misguided fools being killed by an attacker is now much greater because they have given up their firearms,” not-at-all-sensationalist blogger William Kapeles wrote about the buyback. One gun nut actually loved the idea — so much so that he wrote the Plain Dealer to deliver our Backhanded Compliment of the Week. Frank Hribar, of Mentor, began his letter, “I just wanted to say how much I liked the gun swap,” which prompted a Jackson assistant reading the paper the next morning to break out some scissors, and make room on the office bulletin board. But just as the assistant took down that old “Frank Jackson Reportedly Our Mayor” news clipping, Hribar announced that he had turned in some broken guns, which he bought for $15 or $20 at gun shows. “Between the parts I sold and the turn-in,” he gushes, “I cleared $185,” adding that he would’ve loved to return home and get some more worthless shit to swindle the police with, but, sadly, there just wasn’t enough time between episodes of Antique Roadshow and the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. We leave you with Hribar's close, the back of a hand so freakishly gigantic we have to wonder how he even types with those Shaq-sized fingers: “What a deal -- free gas for the next month!" he wrote. "Time to buy more cheap guns.” -- Gus Garcia-Roberts