An Albuquerque gun buyback event helped remove more than 200 weapons from city streets. | File photo
A gun buyback event last weekend helped remove hundreds of guns off Albuquerque streets.
Coordinated by the Albuquerque Police Department, the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office, and Guns to Gardens, the event was held at La Mesa Presbyterian Church in the International District.
Organizers reported 207 guns were collected as owners exchanged the weapons for gift cards. The gift cards, according to KRQE, started at $100 for long guns and pistols and up to $250 for assault weapons. The allotment of $24,600 in gift cards was distributed within the first 2 hours. Each gun was verified to make sure it wasn’t reported as stolen.
An Albuquerque gun buyback event helped remove more than 200 weapons from city streets.
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“The guns are forged into gardening tools,” Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, told KRQE. “These particular guns will be forged by the students at RFK Charter. They’ll be learning how to forge and use a wooden lathe to create gardening tools for community gardens and to raise funds for more gun buybacks.”
Guns to Gardens, according to its website, is a grassroots gun buyback program that gets unwanted guns off the streets and out of homes before transforming them into gardening tools and art. It launched in 2016 and has completed 13 gun buybacks. It has dismantled more than 1,030 firearms. More than 38% have been semi-automatic and assault rifles.
