Pot clubs help pay for S.F. gun buyback

Antique guns brought to the gun buyback event at Ella Hill Hutch Community Center in San Francisco, Calif., Saturday March 21, 2015. Antique guns brought to the gun buyback event at Ella Hill Hutch Community Center in San Francisco, Calif., Saturday March 21, 2015. Photo: Sophia Germer / The Chronicle Photo: Sophia Germer / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close Pot clubs help pay for S.F. gun buyback 1 / 19 Back to Gallery

An only-in-San Francisco alliance of police, community groups and medical marijuana dispensaries held a gun buyback in the city’s Western Addition that took an AR-15 assault rifle and 90 other weapons off the streets Saturday.

The unusual joint effort came as funding for previous buybacks — usually cobbled together with leftover city community-assistance money and more recently, crowdfunding via the Internet — had been sporadic.

San Francisco’s medical marijuana dispensaries — long maligned as magnets for street crime and repeatedly targeted by federal raids in recent years — offered to step in last year.

On Saturday, San Francisco police showed off an AR-15 military style assault rifle — worth more than $1,000 — that they bought back for $200 as part of the haul of 91 weapons purchased with pot club cash.

The pot clubs “are trying do their part,’’ said Northern Station Capt. Greg McEachern. “We appreciate that.”

The captain said taking just one assault weapon off the street made the entire day’s effort worthwhile. “It’s a very big deal.”

Brendan Hallinan, a lawyer for the marijuana dispensaries and son of former District Attorney Terence Hallinan, said the pot clubs were happy to help. He said he easily solicited $50,000 last year from three of the city’s two dozen dispensaries — the Green Door, Barbary Coast and Grass Roots — to underwrite police buybacks.

“There is this idea that pot clubs have a negative impact on the community and are a drain on law enforcement,” Hallinan said. “They were really excited and see this as a way of improving community safety. Youth violence is a big problem. It was just a really nice fit.”

Rudy Corpuz, executive director of United Playaz youth organization, which joined forces with the pot clubs to organize the event, pronounced Saturday’s effort a total success.

“It was some serious heat that came through” during the two pot-club-sponsored buybacks, Corpuz said. In December, more than 100 guns were bought back, followed by 91 on Saturday. The operation allows anonymous payouts of $100 for handguns and $200 for assault weapons.

“A lot of these guns that are turned in were guns that were laying around, and people don’t use them,” he said. “I just want to let people know: I’m not against people bearing arms.”

He said that fewer guns on the street means less chance they will be used in crimes. “We’re preventing people from getting killed.”

When a gang-related quadruple homicide occurred in the Western Addition in January, the group quickly agreed to hold Saturday’s event at the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center. The event began with a lineup of motorists, who swapped more than 30 weapons for cash in the first hour alone.

Corpuz said organizers had been worried that San Francisco police might object to the partnership with pot clubs.

“We wondered if it would be something they (police) would support,” Corpuz said. “They said that 'we can come together as a partner as long as we get guns off the street.’”

Any money not spent buying weapons has been used for after-school jobs and helping the families of violent crime victims. “It’s been going to good use,” he said.

The pot clubs’ help came after Ian Johnstone, a tech entrepreneur, began crowdfunding the city’s gun buybacks in 2013. Johnstone’s father was killed in 1992 by a youth who stole the gun he used in a home burglary.

“I think it is really cool that the medical marijuana community is getting involved,” Johnstone said. “Buybacks show how broadly gun violence impacts’’ society, he said. “There is a diverse crew of people coming together to work on these things. It’s not a black thing, not a white thing. We are all put at risk.”

Before the pot clubs got involved, crowdfunding and other sources helped San Francisco police take 250 guns off the street in 2014, said Sgt. Kin Yau Lee of the SFPD community relations detail.

Not everyone is so convinced buybacks work. John Vernick of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research said studies show gun buybacks are not very effective because they net the wrong kind of firearms.

“The highest-risk guns for being used in crime tend to be newer, tend to be higher caliber,” Vernick said. “They tend to be semiautomatic pistols instead of revolvers. More importantly, they tend to be functional instead of broken.”

“It is not as if you don’t get any high-risk guns,” in such buybacks, Vernick said, but “disproportionately, you don’t get the high-risk guns and you don’t tend to get the highest-risk people participating.”

The money it costs to run buybacks could better be spent on targeted enforcement on those carrying concealed weapons and on programs designed to mentor youths in avoiding violence, he suggested.

Johnstone said gun buyback success cannot be measured by numbers alone.

“I think from the Police Department’s point of view, they are just happy to get the guns off the street,” he said. “That is a win for them and less danger to the people of the city, less danger to the police force.”

Jaxon Van Derbeken is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com