The Dane County Board of Supervisors voted to adopt a resolution to fund a voluntary gun buyback program at their meeting last Thursday night.
The program will be run by the Dane County Sheriff’s Office in conjunction with the Madison Police Department. The two departments will trade gift cards for gas and groceries to residents giving up their unwanted guns.
Once the departments get the guns, they will then take them to be destroyed. There is no residency requirement for the program, and everyone is welcome.
Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett says that the program will show people that the entire community cares about reducing gun violence in Madison.
“It’s about community collaboration. It’s not just about the sheriff’s department, it’s not just about the Madison Police Department, it’s about us working with community organizations here in Dane County to show that we are willing to do anything possible to help reduce gun violence, but also reduce the amount of firearms that are in the homes,” Sheriff Barrett says.
Barrett says that some of the organizations involved in the project include Tellurian Behavioral Health, NAACP of Dane County, and the Urban League of Greater Madison.
The resolution to approve the event, as well as the funding needed for the event, needed to pass a 2/3rds vote at last week’s county board meeting. The resolution passed with flying colors, with only one supervisor, Jeff Weigand of district 20, voting against it. Weigand, who did not respond to a request for comment today, said he was voting no because there was not enough data to show that the program would do anything to combat gun violence.
Board Chair Patrick Miles says that he is not concerned with the lack of data.
“From my point of view, if we are able to save one life by getting one gun out of circulation, to me that’s success. I give Sheriff Barrett a lot of credit for initiating this effort, and I hope that gets some good results in getting some guns out of circulation,” Miles says.
District 3 Supervisor Analiese Eicher says that the program is one way the county can get around state laws restricting local communities from passing gun legislation.
“It’s important because it is one more thing we can do to get guns off of the streets, and at the same time support folks in our community with gas and grocery cards, ” Eicher says. “Gun violence is not a singular issue, and the solution is not a singular solution either. Being able to operate a program like this is going to give us the opportunity to get guns off of the street and support our community at the same time.”
It is not the first gun buyback program here in Madison. Last month, an event called Guns 2 Garden Tools was held at the Midvale Lutheran Church. Guns 2 Garden Tools is a national effort to get unwanted guns out of homes, and instead turn them into regular garden tools.
Jeff Wild helped run the program here in Madison. He says that the event was a success.
“We didn’t have any confrontations with anybody. People seemed really happy to willingly surrender their firearms, and we ended up distributing around $2500 worth of Pick n Save gift cards. We received 30 firearms, most of which were rifles and shotguns, but a number of handguns as well and also one AR-15. It was uplifting that one person was willing to surrender that one firearm,” Wild says.
And on site at the Guns 2 Garden Tools event was Sheriff Barrett, who applauded their work to repurpose the guns.
“As part of our research I was actually out there and I assisted while they were clearing two of the rifles that they had received. Being out there and talking with them, as well as in our research that has taken us to other parts of the country, (helped us) with understanding what worked well for those programs and what were the areas where they could improve. By taking all that data from the research, we customized our Gift Cards to Guns Program so it could be as successful as possible in reducing the population of unwanted weapons in our communities,” Barrett says.
Jeff Wild says that another Gun Buyback Program will be held by local faith leaders in December. Wild says that specific details on that event are not yet available.
The Dane County Gun Buyback Program is tentatively scheduled August 13th, and will be held at the Alliant Energy Center. Sheriff Barrett says that, if the event goes well, more will be held in the future.
Photo courtesy: Johannes W / UNSPLASH
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