The Reality of Weapons Buybacks

They set out with boundless energy and a mission to get guns off their streets, where violence is so common that many can’t imagine a life without it.

With the help of their history teacher, the students at El Sereno Middle School decided to do what fed-up communities across the nation have done for years.

They raised money to buy back weapons, preferably from gang members and other people who shouldn’t have them. They hit the pavement in May, selling candy to neighbors in their Eastside community.

But they soon marched into a thicket of logistical snags, showing the profound difficulty people face in trying to get guns away from bad guys.

At a news conference Thursday, El Sereno student Samantha Diaz, 13, offered condolences to the families devastated by the shooting in Granada Hills this week and announced that her class raised $2,800 for a buyback that will take place Saturday at El Sereno Senior Center. The students hope to buy 28 guns at $100 apiece.

“We want to make it clear that this [buyback] is not anti-gang, or anti-NRA,” she said, referring to the National Rifle Assn. “It is pro-youth. We are tired of the senseless killing in our neighborhoods, and in the nation.”

But after working out many details of how gun owners would relinquish their weapons--to police officers on the scene--the students said they ran into a state law that seems to defeat the purpose of the buyback. Police cannot take a gun, even one voluntarily handed over, without noting the owner’s name, address and phone number, officials said.

Although the reason for the law is to ensure that guns used in crimes can be traced, the students logically assume that no gang member or criminal would turn over their weapon under such circumstances.

This has been the key dilemma with buybacks since they first became popular in the United States a decade ago, said Luis Tolley, western director of the nonprofit organization Handgun Control.

“They’re not going to take guns away from hardened criminals,” Tolley said, citing the alleged gunman at the Jewish Community Center, Buford Oneal Furrow. But he said the buybacks can help educate people, and remove guns from some homes, preventing an argument from turning deadly.

The students said it was frustrating trying to convince the police to allow gun owners to remain anonymous. More than 100 students helped in the fund-raising and many said they met or knew gang members who would give up their guns, but only if they didn’t have to give their names. Ernie Delgado, their teacher, set up meeting with the captain of the Hollenbeck police station, as well as the former president of the Police Commission.

But police would not bend. They said they must make sure that a gun is relinquished only by the legal owner--no stolen weapons allowed--and that it was not involved in a crime.

Tolley praised the students, but said their real service “is going door-to-door and talking about having guns in the home,” he said. “If you measure these buybacks by the guns retrieved, it’s going to be a failure.”

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Mike Peterson, who helped make the El Sereno buyback a reality, agrees. “With so many guns on the streets . . . the buybacks just scrape the surface,” he said.

But in other countries, gun buybacks have been extremely effective, said Rebecca Peters, a visiting fellow at the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture in New York, a criminal justice think tank. Where they have worked well, the buybacks have been anonymous and accompanied changes in the law that ban the types of weapons to be bought.

In 1996, Australia began a yearlong, nationwide buyback of semiautomatic weapons after a shooting rampage in Tasmania that left 35 people dead. The government banned such weapons for general use, and more than 640,000 guns--about one-sixth of the guns in the nation--were retrieved, Peters said.

In 1997, the British government banned handguns after an elementary school shooting in Scotland that left 16 children dead. A subsequent gun buyback netted 180,000 guns, Peters said.

Both of those buybacks allowed the gun owners to remain anonymous, she said. “The emphasis was on getting the guns out of circulation, on prevention,” she said. “Here there is an emphasis on prosecution.”

Peters said that most buybacks in the United States are sponsored by local communities because “they’re frustrated with violence.”

The students at El Sereno Middle School say they often hear shooting at night, where gang violence is on an upswing this year, according to police.

“We can relate to the people in Granada Hills,” Diaz said. “If you ask anyone at El Sereno Middle School, they will tell you they know a family member or friend who is a victim of gun violence.”

The buyback will take place at the senior center at Eastern Avenue and Klamath Place between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Gun owners must arrive with unloaded guns in the trunks of their cars; ammunition must be in the back seat, police said.