I apologize for the delayed reply, I've been under the weather for the past several days. I agree with much of what you said but there are lemons in every law enforcement agency, even the FBI. I've personally seen culls in many departments that didn't deserve to be wearing a badge but they were. I haven't been following the case closely so I can't really comment or especially judge on much. Also the comment you made about how much of what we read is actually true is a good point also. When I based my opinion about someone dropping the ball, it stemmed from quotes from the FBI knowing about his history and other red flags. Maybe they were building a case on him, who knows? They will only release so much information to the public without an order. I know that some officers are being investigated now on whether or not they should have acted on prior information. But I'm not here to criticize the officers that had a hand in the case, but I do believe something was missed possibly somewhere along the lines.
The gun buy back program was designed for the purpose as you stated, to get weapons away from people that didn't need them to begin with. I own several guns and not one of them I would part with for 200 dollars, so that kinda gives an idea of the types of weapons being turned in, like Saturday night specials and such. The fact that it was totally voluntary and no questions asked made it a huge success. Why I haven't seen this happen again I will never know, I've only seen it happen once in my lifetime.