SPRINGFIELD -- About 60 unwanted guns were turned in during a no-questions-asked gun buyback day held Saturday.
This is the second time this year Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni and Baystate Health joined forces to give people a chance to receive Big Y gift certificates for $50 when they turned in a gun that they did not want. The buyback in June netted more than 120 firearms, said James Leydon, spokesman for Gulluni.
"Usually it is older folks, people who say they have unwanted, unused firearms in their homes," Leydon said. "We collected a fair amount of rifles and a decent amount of handguns."
The goal of the buyback is to reduce gun deaths, which is at a record high of nearly 40,000 in 2017, according to the Center for Disease Control which keeps the statistics. About 60 percent of those deaths, or more than 23,000, are suicides, Leydon said.
Removing an unused firearm from a home eliminates the temptation someone may have to kill themselves and instead give them time to talk to family members or friends and seek help, he said.
The focus on health is the reason Baystate Health Systems joined with law enforcement to offer people a way to turn in firearms that are no longer wanted, Leydon said.
Some unlawful firearms found on the street were once legally owned guns that were stolen in housebreaks and later sold through the black market so having guns removed from homes where they are not wanted helps to prevent that from happening, he said.
All the guns that were turned in were catalogued and their serial numbers recorded. They all will be destroyed, he said.
In the past the District Attorney's Office has received some historic guns that were turned over to the Springfield Armory, but there were no surprises in this event, Leydon said.
The effort was done with the help of the John C. Wood II Foundation, which is based in Granby and was named in memory of a medical resident who was a bystander who was shot to death during a street corner robbery.
The Springfield Fire Department also provided the Raymond Sullivan Safety Complex to be used for the effort, he said.
People who do have unwanted guns in their homes can call their local police department for assistance if they want to get rid of them, Leydon said.