Are you a hungry Phoenix resident with an old gun lying around? The police department wants you to know you can exchange it for groceries.
Started this past Saturday, the Phoenix police department is running a guns-for-groceries buyback program, as CBS 5 News reported. Citizens can turn in their unwanted guns for gift certificates to grocery stores — $200 for assault weapons and $100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles.
“The Gun Buyback program will provide residents an opportunity to voluntarily turn in unwanted firearms in exchange for gift cards, while engaging our communities towards a common goal of reducing gun violence and improving safety,” the event website states.
More than 800 guns were rounded up in the first day of the event, taking the $100,000 worth of grocery store gift cards down to just $10,000. Following this success, the police department is asking for more donations to fund the program on the next two Saturdays in May.
Following the completion of the buyback, the guns will be checked for lost or stolen status and returned to their rightful owners. All other guns — except for historically significant weapons — will be destroyed. Private buyers tried to prevent the destruction by standing just outside the buyback locations and offering cash for the weapons, Breitbart reported.
The Phoenix police department will be prevented from destroying the guns after future events of this type, following Republican Gov. Jan Brewer’s signing of a law that prohibits the police from destroying guns acquired in buyback programs. The police department claims the buyback was in the works long before the law was signed on April 29, but they hope to process and destroy the guns collected before the law goes into effect in about 90 days. The new law requires cities and counties to sell the weapons collected instead of destroying them, The Huffington Post reported.
