ST. LOUIS, MO — Hundreds of people lined up Saturday morning to turn in their firearms in exchange for holiday cash. So many people turned out for the city's gun buyback, in fact, that the program ran out of cash well before it was over. For a city that has seen more than 200 murders this year — a 21-year record — getting 303 handguns and more than 530 rifles and shotguns off the streets is a huge success, officials said.

The program was open to anyone and many from the county and St. Charles participated, in addition to city residents. The collected guns will be destroyed. St. Louis and the United States have seen a gun violence epidemic in recent years. More than 30,000 Americans are killed by guns every year and twice that number are injured, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 13,000 are murdered. The rest take their own lives or are victims of accidents. Almost half are children or young adults. To put that into perspective, there are 58,318 names etched into the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, for a conflict that lasted nearly 20 years.



"Guns and violence in St. Louis are everybody's problem, and we need everybody in St. Louis to work on the solutions to gun violence," said former U.S. attorney Ed Dowd Jr. in a telephone interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "The gun buyback is one piece. If it stops one person from being shot, one person murdered or robbed, I would consider it successful. It will have a bigger impact that that." The turnout, Mayor Lyda Krewson said at a press conference, "speaks to hour our community is awash in guns and how difficult that makes our police officers' jobs. It also speaks to the good people of this community who went to their basements or garage and said, 'I don't want this gun to fall into the wrong hands."

The vast majority of gun crimes are committed with lost or stolen weapons, according to an analysis by the University of Pittsburgh, lending support both to sides of the gun-rights debate. Proponents of gun rights point to the fact that less than a fifth of gun crimes are committed by lawful gun owners, while gun safety advocates say that any gun, lawful or otherwise, has the potential to be stolen and used in a crime. Research supports the fact that getting guns off the streets make cities safer. Voluntary gun buybacks seem like a satisfactory solution for many on both sides of the debate. While some said that criminals wouldn't bother to turn their weapons in, others were more hopeful that just getting guns off the street will be a big step in the right direction. The Post-Dispatch reported that one St. Louis-resident, Tom Flowers, said "it would be nice if the buyback would turn up the $1,200 handgun that was stolen from his home in south St. Louis a few years ago."