I thought you were referring to rescue because of this statement "My breeder wanted to buy one last year just for that purpose, she has the rescue for the west half of the country." It's irrelevant. Buying puppies from petstores keeps puppymills in business and to say you are doing so to spay them so puppymill puppies won't end up in the gene pool is not logical.
They didn't want poorly bred dogs out on the market.
You don't do that by helping to support the puppymill industry. When a puppy sells, they replace it with more puppies and more sales encourages them to produce more. The economics of it is not that difficult.
You know what happens to pet store dogs when they don't sell don't you?
It varies. If people don't buy them, they won't produce them. Petstores will reduce the price of a puppy until someone takes it. Your "group" is making a mistake by making it profitable for the puppymills. Supporting petstores/puppymills continues the cycle. See this link:
Why are you freaking out?
I'm hardly "freaking out." Why are you so uncomfortable?
than see a whole pile of crappy puppies out there bred by irresponsible breeders.
First, I'd never define any puppy as crappy and have never worked with anyone in rescue that would. 2nd, the best way to reduce the number is to stop supporting puppymills. They don't care what you do with the puppies you purchase. They only know that somebody is buying them and it suits them to whelp more.
No, I wouldn't define one as crappy, just refering to bad genetics. I would take in a dog that was messed up because I love dogs, but I would damn sure feel better that its genes weren't being spread.