Time for another gun buyback program

The increased stresses, tensions and anxieties resulting from the pandemic crisis, coupled with the greater-thannormal release of individuals from prison on probation or parole, have, as New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes recently said, given rise to a “perfect storm” of gun violence in the city in recent weeks and months. New Haven is not, of course, the only city to experience an upsurge in gun violence this year. But the magnitude of the increase here is nevertheless dramatic — and troubling.

According to the CompStat data compiled on a weekly and monthly basis by the Police Department, from Jan. 1 through Aug. 30 there were 16 murders this year compared with seven in the same period last year. That’s a 129 percent increase and the highest number since 2011. Likewise, there was a dramatic increase in the number of victims of nonfatal assaults with a firearm between Jan. 1 and Aug. 30 from 51 last year to 71 this year, a 39 percent increase. That, also, was the largest number of such victims since 2011. And the number of incidents of confirmed shots being fired between Jan. 1 and Aug. 30 increased from 104 last year to 130 this year, a 25 percent increase and the highest number since 2013. Indicative of the increased stress and tension in these difficult times that may be contributing to the increased gun violence, thus far this year there have been 1,244 incidents of intimidation or threatening, compared with 813 last year, a 53 percent increase.

The extent of gun violence in New Haven has decreased significantly from the record levels that were recorded in 2011, when there more than 30 homicides, 100 nonfatal shooting victims and 400 confirmed shots fired, not only because of the sustained efforts of the NHPD but, at least in part, also because of the introduction in December of that year of annual gun buybacks at the Police Academy on Sherman Parkway. Over the years, those buybacks, conducted in partnership with the Injury Free Coalition for Kids of New Haven and the Yale New Haven Hospital’s Injury & Violence Prevention Program, have taken more than 800 guns, including a number of assault weapons, off the streets and, through the innovative Swords into Plowshares program, have turned them into gardening tools. Inspired by the New Haven program, in February Hamden held its first gun buyback program and took in 149 guns.

Skeptics argue that buyback programs don’t prevent gun violence, that they only take in guns from law-abiding citizens who would never use them in a crime and don’t reach those who are likely to use them in a crime. But the skeptics ignore the fact that guns can and do move very easily from one person to another, by sale, theft or exchange, into and within a city. As a result, it’s quite possible that a gun currently in the possession of a lawabiding citizen will at some point in the future fall into the hands of someone else who will use it in a shooting. Indeed, any gun that’s not turned in could quite possibly be used sometime in the future by someone other than the current owner in a shooting.

Likewise, some argue that buyback programs are ineffective and don’t reduce the aggregate amount of gun violence. That may or may not be true; there’s no easy way to prove or disprove that since it’s obviously impossible to say how many people might have been shot if there hadn’t been a buyback. But what can be said is that every gun that’s turned in is a gun that won’t be used in a shooting at some future time.

The dramatic upsurge in gun violence this year has reversed much of the progress that had been made since 2011 in reducing such violence. Rather than waiting until mid-December for the usual annual buyback, the message from the recent CompStat data is clear: It’s time for another gun buyback.