Fort Worth Police Department wraps up gun buyback event three days early
FORT WORTH, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - An event that's intended to get guns off the streets changed quickly. Fort Worth police hosted a gun buyback program and ran out of gift cards to give those turning in weapons.
The Fort Worth gun buyback program ended quickly on Monday.
"We weren't expecting so many so fast. This was supposed to last over the period of about four days and we were done in about three and a half hours," Fort Worth Police Commander Dave Carabajal said.
#NEW: The Fort Worth Gun Buy Back event is officially over.
— Alexis Wainwright (@AWainwrightTV) June 27, 2022
In just 3 hours police say they had more than 107 buys. A gift card was given for each weapon.
This event was supposed to last for four days. They did say you can still surrender a gun for free if you’d like. @CBSDFW pic.twitter.com/dLgqdC63te
The goal is to give people a safe environment to surrender weapons.
"My biggest concern is just right now, young boys like my grandson getting these guns in their hands and being influenced to use them in bad ways," Vanessa Bennett said. "I just want to save lives."
After police bought 107 guns from people in the community, they ran out of gifts cards and another group showed up.
"So we wanted to come out here and get some good deals," Open Carry Texas President and Founder, CJ Grisham said.
Right outside of the event there was a group of people who were able to offer cash and buy guns themselves.
"We offered them $100 in cash, instead of one hundred in gift cards," Grisham said. "And if they were just going to take it in there we might increase it a little bit but I think the average price we paid was maybe $150 today."
Grisham said majority of the people they approached accepted his offer. CBS 11 asked Fort Worth police about guns they hoped would be taken off the street, remaining in the community.
"It's their right, we respect their rights to come out and do what they have to do," Carabajal said. "We respect their rights to have their opinions."
Grisham along with a few other men said they bought 30 guns all together.
"These guns will be put to good use in self defense, in self defense of ourselves, of our families and of our communities," Grisham said. "So we're not doing this to get guns on the street this is for law abiding citizens to use. We got some shot guns for hunting purposes."
The gun buyback event is officially over but you can still surrender a gun to your local police department.