LAPD Calls Tickets for Guns Exchange a Success

Even though the vast majority of those who gave up their weapons during a Tickets for Guns promotion apparently were law-abiding citizens, Los Angeles police said Tuesday that they view the effort as a success and are considering doing it again.

“If we get weapons off the street, we’ve accomplished something,” Capt. Paul Pesqueira of the 77th Street Division said.

Police Chief Willie L. Williams is expected to look at the results of the program, which yielded 412 weapons over the five-day period ending Dec. 23, before deciding whether to endorse another such effort.

Sponsored by KTTV Channel 11 with the help of TicketMaster, Tickets for Guns offered passes to shows and sporting events in exchange for weapons. The promotion was kicked off with little notice--announced Dec. 17, just a day before participating churches threw open their doors to the gun owners.

Exchange programs in San Francisco and Oakland produced 177 guns and 68 guns, respectively. But those took place on one day and in one place, while the Los Angeles effort lasted five days and used six churches as drop-off sites.

The weapons exchanged in Los Angeles included 110 rifles, 251 handguns, 49 shotguns and two military-style semiautomatic rifles. Our Lady of the Valley in Canoga Park collected 125 guns, the largest number turned in at any church.

“We got anything from .22-(caliber) rifles and handguns to military-style carbines,” said Officer Peter Vanderburgh of the West Valley Division. One person, he said, brought in a pre-World War I Chinese musket.

People came from as far as Palmdale and Oxnard, most of them men under 50. Vanderburgh said one person brought an Uzi-type weapon that he had purchased for $350. He got two tickets to a Janet Jackson concert in trade. “I had a feeling he was going to scalp them,” Vanderburgh said.

Vanderburgh said it was plain that most of the people turning in their guns were not criminals who would otherwise be pointing them at people. “Very few, if any” gang members participated, he said. At least one sawed-off shotgun was turned in, though, and Pesqueira noted: “They’re not used in self-protection.”