In December 2023, St. Sabina Church in Auburn Gresham was the venue for an event which had become quite customary there; a gun buyback initiative. Like countless prior events, a crowd assembled in the church’s basement to surrender a vast number of firearms. The church had gained notoriety as the city’s most popular surrender point, with over 5,100 firearms turned in for gift cards during the past two decades.
The air was filled with a sense of anticipation, confusion, and ultimately pandemonium on that particular day. Among the piles of surrendered firearms, one Glock handgun mysteriously vanished. This discovery was made by a vigilant police officer who noticed that the corresponding tag of the missing Glock was affixed to a different firearm, and the Glock’s envelope was later discovered in the trash.
Despite the room being full of officers responsible for maintaining a proper inventory, the Glock somehow disappeared undetected. Its location remained a mystery until almost a year later when it was found with a minor following a pursuit. The young boy, merely 16, was apprehended in South Shore, about five miles from the church, the original site of the gun surrendering.
The revelation that the Glock had originally been handed over to the police during a buyback initiative bemused the adolescent’s mother. Following this incident, the sergeant monitoring the inventory process was suspended for a day, but no other officers faced any disciplinary action.
This strange incident hinted at greater systemic issues; it was eerily reminiscent of a previous case where a firearm handed in by a Cook County judge at a buyback event disappeared, only to surface at a scene of police-involved shooting in Cicero, as noted in a 2017 report.
Post the Cicero incident, the city embarked on an investigation that spanned over five years. However, due to the daunting and seemingly imprudent task of interviewing every single individual involved in the buyback, the investigators decided not to interview anyone at all.
Such occurrences have led to serious doubts regarding the efficiency and overall organization of Chicago’s gun buybacks. These buybacks have been implemented as part of the city’s community policing and image-building efforts for nearly twenty years, and are promoted as a key part of the solution to reducing violent criminal acts.
According to law enforcement, these initiatives have been crucial in igniting public involvement in the persistent issue of gun violence, and ensuring the elimination of potential weapons from the city’s streets. However, their impact and efficacy in actually curtailing the supply of shooting-related firearms is a matter of critical debate among scholars.
The gun buyback concept hinges on the perception that anonymity encourages individuals to willingly surrender their firearms, resulting in safer local communities. However, this strategy faces a significant challenge due to the sheer volume of firearms present within the country, which outweigh the number of individuals.
Statistics paint a daunting picture; the sum of guns relinquished during these buybacks is merely a minuscule fraction, when compared to the vast lake of firearms across the nation. The majority of the surrendered weapons are typically outdated or malfunctioning, and are rarely if ever, associated with gang-related violence.
In Chicago, the figures generated from these initiatives also play a part in the total annual number of recoveries reported by the police department. This crucial metric is utilized by the agency to demonstrate its commitment to ongoing crime mitigation efforts.
Since 2006, the department has catalogued over 199,000 firearms, a significant figure. Approximately 18%, or close to 35,000 of these firearms, were collected from buyback events, highlighting their potential role in reducing accessibility of weapons.
Consider the life cycle of a firearm – it can pass through numerous hands and potentially even be repurposed for different uses. Every firearm recovered in a buyback initiative – whether functioning or defunct, new or old – represents one less potential tool for crime.