Residents anonymously give up 191 weapons in countywide program offering amnesty and gift cards in return

Worcester area residents lined up Saturday to surrender a total of 191 weapons in exchange for gift cards at an annual gun buyback program that took place at locations across the county.

Dr. Michael P. Hirsh, the Worcester Division of Public Health medical director and founder of Guns for Goods, said that 66 replica guns, 66 rifles, 19 pistols and 40 semiautomatic weapons were dropped off at designated locations across Worcester County.

Gun owners dropped off weapons at the Worcester Police Department in Lincoln Square and City Welding & Fabrication on Ararat Street, and in Athol, Auburn, Dudley, Fitchburg, Northborough, Spencer and Leominster.

The program offers complete anonymity and amnesty for any illegally owned guns.

“People responded to the concern of community safety,” said Hirsh.

Every December for 21 years, the program has offered gun owners gift cards supplied by UMass Memorial Health and the Worcester District Attorney’s Office.

Gift cards, trigger locks distributed

On Saturday, a $150 gift card was given for a semiautomatic weapon, $100 for a pistol and $50 for a rifle – double the amount that former gun owners received last year.

Gunowners were also given a free trigger lock as part of the program’s promotion of safe gun habits, even if they did not bring in a gun.

“Someone came in with a very expensive semiautomatic weapon on Saturday," said Hirsh. "We said, ‘We're only going to give you $150 for it.’

“They said, ‘It doesn't matter to me — I just want to get it out of the house.'”

Hirsh first organized a Goods for Guns event in Pittsburgh in 1994, where he worked as a trauma surgeon.

In 2002, he brought the program to Worcester, working with the UMass Memorial Injury Prevention Center and the Worcester District Attorney’s Office to organize and fund the program.

Hirsh said that the turnout was a significant improvement since the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, only 26 were collected by the program despite the drive-thru drop-off option that was offered to residents.

Guns transformed into tools

Saturday's event was part of a nationwide initiative by Guns to Gardens, which remakes guns obtained at buybacks into gardening tools.

The tools are then distributed to community gardens fighting food insecurity.

Hirsh said that the program is a chance for gun owners — licensed or not — to decrease the risk of gun injuries at home, but also to raise awareness of gun injuries.

“If you have a firearm at home that raises the risk for injury and death in that home,” Hirsh said. “If you have additional factors on top of just the presence of the firearm, like a demented uncle who lives in the home, a depressed teenager who lives in the home, an inquisitive toddler, looking around, trying to find the weapons who's in the home, an angry spouse with whom you're having a domestic dispute, all that raises the level of risk.

“If you can't secure your weapon safely and away from these risky inhabitants of your home, it's better to get it out of the home so we don’t see these tragedies happen in a recurrent basis.”

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: gun buyback program across worcester county saturday 191 weapons dropped off in exchange for amnesty and gift cards