City Councilman Jesse Moreno recently announced potential plans for hosting a voluntary gun “buyback” program for Dallas residents in the near future. Moreno has not mentioned where the funds for the potential buyback would come from.
Moreno has represented District 2, which wraps around the west, south, and east sides of downtown, since 2021.
Recently, the community has been rocked by violent crime, including several shootings, which led the Dallas Police Department to establish a dedicated community task force, as reported by The Dallas Express.
The surge in crime reportedly led Moreno to suggest a voluntary gun buyback program.
“A lot of these weapons that are used in crimes are typically stolen from vehicles or homes,” Moreno explained to The Dallas Morning News. “So I think this gives us an opportunity to eliminate that factor for people who no longer feel they need or want a gun in their possession.”
Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia indicated that he disagreed with Moreno’s premise that a buyback could reduce crime.
“Our issue with gun violence in the city of Dallas is the criminal element of the possession of firearms … and generally, they are not the ones lining up to sell their weapons,” he said.
However, Moreno indicated that he would attempt to proceed with a buyback initiative regardless of whether the police department backed the proposal.
“We’re absolutely wanting to move forward with this whether we have the support from DPD or not,” he noted.
A number of studies and law enforcement experts have suggested that voluntary gun buyback programs fail to decrease firearm-related crimes.
A 2021 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) concluded that relevant data reflected almost no decrease in firearm-related crimes or suicides following buybacks, calling “into question the efficacy of gun buyback programs.”
The NBER findings correspond with previous studies dating back to the 1990s, when buyback programs began gaining popularity.
A 1994 study published in Public Health Reports stated that the programs reviewed “failed to reduce significantly the frequency of firearm injuries, deaths, or crimes.”
Likewise, a 2002 article in the research journal Injury Prevention found that the types of guns turned in during buybacks are not the types often used in crimes.
John Jay College Professor and former NYPD sergeant Joseph Giacalone claimed that buyback programs were “dog-and-pony shows.” He continued, “It’s feel-good, it’s to make it look like politicians are going to do something, but it means absolutely nothing.”
However, anti-gun group Gun by Gun suggests that buy-back programs do work, and “On the participant level, they produce material reductions in the likelihood of gun violence occurring in a home.”
Fort Worth recently conducted a similar event that collected over 100 firearms.