Gun Buyback Will Turn Firearms Into Garden Tools

Worcester MA

07 June, 2022

4:27 PM

Description

WORCESTER, MA — A unique gun buyback event will take place in Worcester this weekend: gun owners will get gift cards for firearms whose metal will be used to make gardening tools. The UMass Memorial Goods for Guns program is cohosting the Saturday event with the group Guns to Gardens, which is sponsoring gun buyback events across the nation this weekend to turn weapons into garden tools. No questions asked, gun owners can turn in replica weapons for a $25 gift card, pistols for a $50 gift card and semiautomatic weapons for $75. The buyback will be held at City Welding, which will crush the weapons and donate the metal to blacksmithing students. "An unsecured weapon in the home is a public health danger that leads to more frequent homicides, burglaries, lethal domestic violence, accidental shootings and suicide in the home, Worcester Medical Director and UMass trauma surgeon Dr. Michael Hirsh said in a news release. "Please honor the memories of all our citizens, young and old, harmed by gun violence by bringing in your unwanted/unsecured weapon(s) (unloaded please) in a plain plastic or paper bag." The annual Goods for Guns buyback is personal for Hirsh: his friend and colleague, John Chase Wood II, was shot and killed outside Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan in 1981, an incident that sparked his quest to reduce gun violence. He founded the Goods for Guns buyback program in the early 1990s while working as a doctor in Pittsburgh; he brought the program to UMass in 2001. The last Goods for Guns event in December collected over 2,400 guns. Saturday's event will fall five weeks after a racist mass shooter killed 10 in Buffalo, and more than three weeks after an 18-year-old massacred 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. But there have been 33 more mass shootings since Uvalde, according to reports. "Removing guns from circulation reduces the likelihood of homicides, suicides, and accidental gun deaths," Guns to Gardens says on its website. "Less guns = less gun violence." The Worcester gun buyback will take place from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at City Welding & Fabrication, 10 Ararat St. Anyone turning in a gun should put the weapon in a bag; gift cards will not be given for either nonworking guns or ammunition.