Gun Buyback Event Yields 817 Firearms
Results of a Los Angeles gun buyback program in 2011. (Photo credit: David Starkopf / Office of the Mayor)
On Monday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck announced that Saturday’s Los Angeles Gun Buyback event, part of a statewide campaign, yielded 817 firearms — more than San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco.
In total, 387 handguns, 268 rifles, 131 shotguns and 31 assault weapons were collected from three locations across the city, including Wilmington, Van Nuys and Central Los Angeles.
“This program is about something simple: Taking guns off the streets of Los Angeles,” Garcetti said in a press conference Monday. “They can end up in the hands of criminals, they can end up in the hands of children, they can take lives of others.”
The initiative, a part of Garcetti’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development Office, has taken almost 12,000 guns off the street since its inception in 2009. The Gun Buyback also involves the Los Angeles Police Department, victim advocacy organizations, faith-based groups and other community organizations.
Former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa started the effort nearly five years ago, and while in office, oversaw seven gun buyback events in Los Angeles collecting over 11,000 weapons.
Saturday was Garcetti’s first gun buyback campaign, and California’s first statewide effort, and it fell on the one-year anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Conn., which took the lives of 20 elementary students and six adults.
LAPD Chief Beck made it clear that “weapons can be surrendered at anytime” to police at stations across the city, on Saturday, gun owners were eligible to receive Ralphs gift cards in exchange for their weapons.
The bigger the weapon, the bigger the gift card — the amount exchanged per firearm depends on its type with up to $200 given for assault weapons as specified in the State of California and up to $100 for handguns, rifles, and shotguns.
Beck said Monday that many of the weapons collected Saturday “were illegal,” including assault rifles and sawed-off shotguns.
The Mayor’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development Office staff also conducted a voluntary survey to participants at all three of the Gun Buyback locations, and according to a press release, 90 percent of the 500 respondents felt their neighborhoods were now safer.
The survey also found that nearly 37 percent of respondents said they did not keep the surrendered firearms locked. In addition, 72 percent of respondents said they did not intend to buy another gun, and nearly 59 percent of respondents said their home is now gun free.
This year, for the first time, a statewide buyback took place, and over 1,500 firearms were collected across California.
