TRENTON -- Authorities announced Tuesday they will aim to cut down on firearm violence in New Jersey by holding gun buybacks in three cities next month.

Acting U.S. Attorney William Fitzpatrick and state Attorney General Christopher Porrino also vowed that federal and state officials will work together to prosecute gun crimes aggressively, seeking to impose the most severe penalties against the most serious offenders.

The buybacks will take place over two days -- July 28 and 29 -- at churches in Newark, Trenton, and Camden. The goal is to cover three sections of the state: the north, central, and south, Porrino said.

New Jersey residents can turn in up to three guns, no questions asked. They may receive as much as $200 for each weapon.

Authorities will collect the firearms and melt them down, Porrino said.

"Today is about making New Jersey a safer place," Porrino said at a news conference at the Hughes Justice Complex in Trenton. "We want our communities to be a place where children can play on sidewalks and people can take a walk and not be worried about being caught in crossfire."

Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick and Porrino said state and federal officials will renew their focus on a program known as "Triggerlock," in which major gun offenders arrested by municipal and state authorities are referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office to be prosecuted under federal law, which carry longer prison terms.

Porrino said the buybacks will not cost taxpayers anything. He said they will be paid for with forfeiture funds seized from criminals.

Gun violence has already been prevalent in New Jersey in the early days of summer.

Four people were shot -- two of them to death -- in three separate shootings in Newark on Monday.

In Trenton, where a man was shot on Saturday, a woman was also killed and two men wounded last month.

And last month, Camden saw back-to-back gun homicides over a span of 48 hours, one involving a teenager.

A Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office firearm buyback in September yielded about 200 guns, the largest haul since the program began there in 2012.

Still, there has been criticism about how successful buybacks are in reducing violence. A 2015 investigation by The Trace, a non-profit journalism outlet funded by anti-gun violence non-profit Everytown for Gun Safety, found that most guns turned in to such buyback programs were damaged or inoperable, and therefore unlikely to be used to commit a crime.

In addition, academic studies have found that because of the sheer number of guns in America, the effect of gun buyback programs in decreasing violent crime and reducing firearm mortality is negligible if a buyback yields fewer than 1,000 guns.

But Porrino brushed aside those concerns Tuesday.

"How many lives will we save? I don't know," the attorney general said. "All I know is that when we're taking guns off the street and when we're taking the offenders off the street as well, that's going to have an impact."

The buybacks will take place simultaneously from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Greater Abyssinian Baptist Church in Newark, Friendship Baptist Church in Trenton, and Antioch Baptist Church in Camden.

Residents will be paid $100 of turning in a rifle or shotgun, $120 for a handgun or revolver, and $200 of an assault weapon, officials said.

For more information, call the Attorney General's Citizens Services unit at (609) 984-5828 or visit www.nj.gov/guns.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Claude Brodesser-Akner contributed to this report.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.