Attorney general buyback event to offer gift cards for guns
ALBANY — The office of Attorney General Letitia James will host a gun buyback program Saturday in Watervliet, offering prepaid gift cards in exchange for firearms.
The event, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the J. Leo O’brien Senior Center at 1501 Broadway, is an amnesty program “in which no questions will be asked about the person dropping off the gun.”
Those turning in guns will receive gift cards worth $500 per assault rifle and $250 per handgun. Rifles and shotguns will be exchanged for $75 each, while non-working, antique or replica guns will be worth $25.
The buyback program will also offer $25 gift cards for homemade or 3D-printed guns, though anyone bringing in those firearms will be capped at a total payout of $25. (The payouts for other firearms categories are not capped.)
The event will be hosted in partnership with the Watervliet, Cohoes, Colonie, Green Island and Menands police departments and State Police. Local police will take the firearms into their possession. State troopers will handle the destruction.
Anyone bringing in firearms for exchange is asked to bring them to the center unloaded in a plastic or paper bag or box in the trunk of their vehicle.
The attorney general’s office said in a statement the event is part of its “ongoing effort to help protect New York communities from gun violence and to keep families safe.”
James’ office hosted nine gun buyback events across the state a year ago, bringing in more than 3,000 guns on a sin
gle day in April 2023. The event in Watervliet last year — which was the largest of its kind hosted by the attorney general in the Capital Region — brought in 357 firearms.
Last year, handguns were exchanged for $150, with the first turned in per person worth $500.
James signed onto a recent multi-state brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in support of Massachusetts’ ban on the sale and possession of assault-style weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines.
“Assault rifles and large-capacity magazines are weapons of war, and states must have the right to protect our residents and our communities,” James said in a statement.