Gun buyback program
Encyclopedia
A gun buyback program is a program instituted by an official body to have handguns or other kinds of weapons turned in. A reward is usually posted for these weapons.

Boston

From July 12–14, 2006, the Boston Police Department
Boston Police Department
The Boston Police Department , created in 1838, holds the primary responsibility for law enforcement and investigation within the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the oldest police departments in the United States...

 offered US$200 Target
Target Corporation
Target Corporation, doing business as Target, is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. The company is ranked at number 33 on the Fortune 500 and is a component of the Standard & Poor's...

gift cards in exchange for a handgun, with or without ammunition. Rifles and shotguns were accepted, but had no reward. http://www.cityofboston.gov/aimforpeace/brochure.pdf

In Australia

The Australian gun buybacks of 1996 and 2003 were compulsory compensated surrenders of newly-illegal firearms. They are therefore not directly comparable with the US-style voluntary buybacks.

The 1996 Buyback took 600,000 newly illegal sporting firearms, including all semi-automatic rifles including .22 rimfires, semi-automatic shotguns and pump-action shotguns. The publicity and use of the misleading framing 'automatic and semi-automatic' term gave the impression that the main target was what are called in the US media 'assault weapons', but almost all were sporting rimfires and shotguns. Because the Australian Constitution prevents the taking of property without just compensation the Federal Government decided to put a 1% levy on income tax for one year to finance the compensation. The buyback was predicted to cost $A500 million and had wide community support.

The 2003 handgun buyback compensated the confiscation of about 50,000 newly illegal pistols, the majority being target arms of greater than 9mm calibre (generally used for IPSC competition), or smaller handguns with barrels less than 4" such as pocket pistols, which were mostly licensed for target use as since 1996 licenses cannot be issued for self-defense in Australia. Even anti-gun activists criticised this exercise as pointless because almost all of the confiscated firearms were immediately and legally replaced with others that met the new rules.
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