"Thousands Of LA Citizens Choose Groceries Over Handguns"

[applegrove]

Thousands Of LA Citizens Choose Groceries Over Handguns

By Hayes Brown at Think Progress

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/27/1377731/butter-not-guns/

"SNIP...............................................


Thousands of Los Angeles’ citizens lined parking lots yesterday in a chance to exchange their guns for groceries in a city-organized buyback program. The event, normally an annual Mother’s Day event, was pushed up to Wednesday by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT.

City officials offered up to $100 in gift cards to a local grocery chain for rifles, handguns, and shotguns, with assault weapons fetching more, up to $200 in cards. Despite moving the date, turnout was extremely high, with the two parking lots where the buybacks took place finding themselves overcrowded at times by eager sellers. In fact, the city found itself surpassing last year’s total of 1,673 guns by yesterday afternoon:


Many came bearing more than one gun. They pulled 22 pistols from the trunk of one white Honda, a haul that earned the driver $1,000.

Two men in a pickup truck with two children in the back seat handed over a rifle, a pistol and a MAC-12, altered with a silencer.


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[Arctic Dave]

1. Imagine what they would get if they offered them real money.

A few hundred bucks is OK but if they were to buy them back at retail I would think the numbers would go up significantly.

[Travis_0004]

2. I feel safer already!

[applegrove]

3. I hope this happens across the country.

[LeftInTX]

4. I like the fact that they gave them gift cards

I wonder if businesses donated the cards?
Can't turn around and use cash to buy another gun.

[flamingdem]

7. Ralphs Market donated them

A great thing

[kwassa]

5. Buybacks won't get the problem guns.

those involved in gang and drug transactions.

It might get them out of domestic situations where accidental shootings could take place.

and many in LA who participated didn't give back ALL their guns.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/12/some-la-gun-buyback-participants-admit-they-still-have-weapons.html

[robinlynne]

6. We just don't know that.

I do not say buying guns is the solution . We need serious gun control immediately. but you just don't know how many lives were saved in that parking lot.

[PeaceNikki]

8. Those guns could have been used in domestic violence scenarios, suicides, stolen.

ANY gun off the streets is a good thing.

[beevul]

9. I wonder how many were crime guns, that now can't be tied to the criminal. N/T