The Walsh administration’s much-touted gun buyback program has taken in just one firearm so far this year — a stunning drop from the more than 400 that came in last year, putting police woefully behind last year’s pace in the overall number of guns they’re removing from the street, a Herald review found.

Boston police say the program is still active and funded — though a spokesman couldn’t say to what level — and Mayor Martin J. Walsh yesterday renewed his call for residents to turn over firearms in exchange for gift cards valued from $100 to $200.

But police officials couldn’t say why they’ve taken in just one gun in 2015 after claiming 410 last year.

“There’s no question why the total number is down: The gun buyback’s numbers clearly aren’t on the same level as the guns taken a year ago,” police spokesman officer James Kenneally said. “As long as there’s funding, it’s an option we can provide to community members.”

But Kenneally said the decline shouldn’t reflect on police work to clear guns in other ways. This year, police have seized more than 400 guns through arrests and other means, putting them on pace to meet, or top, the 651 so-called “crime guns” they claimed last year.

“Don’t underestimate the effort that goes into taking those guns off the streets of Boston,” Kenneally said. “Those are the tough guns.”

The buyback program’s success last year pushed the total number of guns Boston police seized to more than 1,060. By comparison this year, 417 guns have been seized by police from criminals and by other means, including the lone buyback weapon, according to Kenneally.

That would put the department on pace for a roughly 33 percent drop overall, the review found.

The massive drop in the gun buyback program, launched last year by Walsh in the face of a surge in shooting violence, comes as the city grapples with another wave of bloodshed that claimed three lives in mere minutes Wednesday night.

Boston has seen 136 non-fatal shootings through Aug. 9, before last night’s burst of violence — ?43 percent more than the same ?period last year. The figure also outpaced the city’s five-year average of 124, according to police data.

Declaring that “we need to get guns off the street,” Walsh renewed his pitch of the buyback program at a mid-afternoon press conference yesterday.

“We need to make sure we double our efforts on that,” the mayor said. “I’m asking any family members out there that you know have a gun in the house — or you might know that one of your kids has a gun — we will come and pick it up. We will take the gun out of the house.”

The impact of buyback programs have long been debated, with critics arguing they rarely bring in the guns that are actually driving the violence in neighborhoods.

Officials in Sonoma County, ?Calif., for example, found in a research project launched in 2013 that while buybacks were good at “garnering a favorable media response, the programs do not have a substantial impact on reduction or prevention of gun violence and typically have no long term effects.”

Darnell Williams, president of the Urban League of Massachusetts, said the rash of violence that hit the city last year helped “galvanize all of our attention,” in part likely helping drive the buyback program. But officials and residents need a consistent, concerted focus to attack street violence, he said.

“It has to be 24/7, 365,” Williams said, “rather than when something happens, we go back to what we were doing and say, ‘This worked then, let’s go back to that.’”

Jordan Graham contributed ?to this report.