Uzi Among The More Than 100 Firearms Collected At Waukegan Gun Buyback

WAUKEGAN, IL — Organizers of a gun buyback event at a north suburban Catholic church say they collected more than a hundred functioning firearms, along with dozens of replicas or BB guns.

During three rainy hours on Saturday, drivers lined up to drop off guns at Most Blessed Trinity Parish in Waukegan at the buyback event, which was co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Waukegan Police Department.

"I was certainly delighted with the efforts of everybody and a good smile on people, really happen that it seems to be a very successful event with more than 100 arms collected," said Rev. Timothy O'Malley, pastor of the Waukegan/North Chicago parish.

Working guns were purchased for $100 cash — no questions asked. Those who dropped off non-functioning guns or replica, BB or pellet guns received $25.

"This is tremendous. We have 107, what we call 'real guns' that were taken in today, then we have additional BB guns," Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor said at the event.

"[While] these may not have been committed in a crime — which we will look at and see when we do testing — they are guns off the street," Taylor said.

According to police, 59 replica, BB or pellet guns were turned in during the event.

"All the people from what I saw, and the officers I talked to, everybody had a really great personality, great attitude and they were very happy to come out and do this," said Scott Chastain, deputy chief of Waukegan police.

Announcing the event, Cardinal Blase Cupich said he and Jeffrey Grob, the archdiocese's auxiliary bishop, had donated $10,000 from their personal resources to support the purchase of 100 guns.

"We, in the Archdiocese of Chicago, know all too well how guns can ravage our communities, whether the daily violence plaguing city neighborhoods or the still-healing scars of last July’s mass shooting in Highland Park," Cupich said in a statement.

"How do we reduce the number of guns in our homes and vehicles and eliminate the means of turning a mental health crisis into a mass casualty event, a moment of anger into lifetime of mourning? And how can we reduce the presence of firearms in our communities when some elected officials respond to mass shootings by replacing their American flag lapel pins with those featuring assault rifles?" Cupich asked.

"Rather than allow ourselves to despair in the face of this mounting death toll," he said, "we must do as Pope Francis has asked and continue the work of eliminating gun violence by building a culture of peace."

The effectiveness of gun buyback programs is the subject of continuing debate among public policy researchers, who have found "little empirical evidence of these programs' effectiveness," according to a RAND Corporation review of U.S. gun buyback programs.

A working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, based on data from the National Incident Based Reporting System and the National Vital Statistics System and revised December 2022, found no evidence that gun buyback programs reduce gun crime, suicides or homicides involving a firearm.

"These results," the authors wrote, "call into question the efficacy of city gun buyback programs in their current forms."