North Texas Gun Buyback Program Nets A Whopping 15 Guns

The goal was to get at least one.

But organizers of a recent gun buyback effort in Dallas say they purchased more than a dozen guns from people who wanted them out of their homes.

“Now there’s 15 less chances there’s a tragedy and we’re glad for that,” said the Rev. Bruce Buchanan, an associate pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Dallas, which has The Stewpot ministry.

The church’s buyback effort coincided with the first anniversary of the tragic Newtown, Conn. massacre — which left 20 children and six educators dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School — and with another gun buyback effort in Dallas.

As church members worked to buy guns to have them destroyed, members of the Come and Take It Texas gun rights activist group also tried to buy back guns at the same site to put them back into circulation.

The gun rights group said they purchased four or five guns in their effort to supply firearms to a Safe Mother program, geared to train women in need how to safely use handguns to protect themselves.

“We didn’t want those guns to be destroyed,” said Murdock Pizgatti, founder and president of Come and Take It Texas. “An armed society is a polite society.”

Communities nationwide generally hold gun buyback events to give gun holders a chance to sell firearms and get them off the streets and out of private homes.

The prices offered by The Stewpot recently in Dallas: $50 for handguns and rifles and up to $200 for semi-automatic assault weapons. The Come and Take It Texas effort offered a little more.

Both sides said the end result was the same: People who no longer wanted their firearms could get rid of them and make a little Christmas money at the same time.