Northampton County set to destroy 312 firearms
It’s rare that I get to share success stories when it comes to gun violence, but I’m happy to share one today.
Authorities in Northampton County will be destroying 312 firearms they obtained through a buyback last weekend.
Those weapons, unwanted by their owners, no longer are laying around homes where they could be mistaken by a child for a toy, or used by someone in a spur of the moment impulse to harm themselves or take out their anger on another.
Or, stolen by a gang member, drug dealer or other hooligan who would use it to kill.
“If one of these guns ... if just one of them was turned in and ultimately saved someone from being accidentally, intentionally or recklessly shot, then we’ll have done our job,” Northampton County District Attorney Terry Houck, whose office funded the buyback, said Wednesday at a news conference.
He spoke from behind a table stacked with 145 pistols and revolvers. More than 140 rifles and shotguns were piled on other tables nearby. Leaning against one table was a semi-automatic rifle.
“I’m convinced that on these tables here there’s a child or an adult that would have been hit, would have been shot at, on the street, in a home ... accidentally, recklessly or intentionally,” Houck said. “I feel very confident of that, just given the numbers.”
The buyback didn’t cost taxpayers. It was financed by drug forfeiture funds — meaning criminals paid for it.
“Any weapon that is turned in that isn’t used in a crime or stolen or somebody’s injured with is a success,” Scott Meixell, Bethlehem’s deputy police chief, said at the news conference at the Colonial
Regional Police Department in Hanover Township.
Bethlehem and Colonial Regional police assisted with the buyback, which was held Saturday at the Hecktown Fire Company in Lower Nazareth and the Bethlehem Fire Department’s Lincoln Station.
People who turned in guns were given $50 to $200 in gift cards, depending on the condition of their firearm, to Weis and ShopRite. About $9,000 in gift cards were distributed.
Houck said officials did not anticipate such a big turnout.
“The idea was if we got 100 weapons, we would consider it a grand slam and a great day,” he said.
When he arrived in Hecktown 15 minutes after the buyback had
started, there were 40 vehicles in line. Houck anticipates having future buybacks, based on the interest in this one.
People who turned in weapons included widows who wanted to dispose of their late husbands’ guns, and parents who wanted to get rid of firearms left behind by children who moved out.
“They didn’t really want anything to do with it ... for fear that someone in the house would get ahold of it or someone would break into the house and get ahold of it and they would be somehow responsible,” Houck said.
Some weren’t even sure if the guns they turned in worked. Some firearms that were displayed at Wednesday’s news conference were layered with
dust and didn’t appear to have been used for quite some time.
Houck said he was surprised when he saw small handguns that easily could have been mistaken for toys.
“I was just envisioning how a child could get this and shoot it with no problem,” he said. “It didn’t take any inordinate amount of strength, nor they would have even known that it was real. There was quite a few of them.”
Authorities checked each weapon to see if it had been reported stolen or used in a crime, but found none.
Getting unwanted guns out of circulation isn’t going to make an impact in reducing the carnage that’s occurring on streets in Allentown, Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania cities.
But it is going to make some homes safer and could prevent some injuries or deaths.
That’s an important and too often overlooked need in reducing gun violence, too.
There are nearly twice as many suicides with guns as there are homicides in Pennsylvania. Of the 1,541 gun deaths in 2019, 63% were suicides and 36% were homicides, according to the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence.
Gun buybacks are a wise use of drug forfeiture funds. I encourage district attorneys in other counties to hold them, too.