By Stephen Witt/Los Angeles County Politics
LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn isn’t packing a tin star or a six-shooter, but the Long Beach supervisor just out-disarmed Wyatt Earp — pulling 430 guns off the street in a single afternoon.
Hahn, who represents San Pedro, Long Beach, Compton, Carson, Lakewood, Hawaiian Gardens, and Cerritos, collected the firearms this past weekend in partnership with the Long Beach Police Department — the most weapons she has gathered at a single buyback since launching the program in 2022.
The event, held at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, pushed her cumulative total to 3,397 firearms collected and destroyed over 17 buybacks in 4 years.
“I am so grateful to everyone who took us up on this offer today and made today’s buyback such a remarkable success,” said Hahn. “We even had people turn in guns in exchange for nothing, after we’d run out of gift cards! That really drives home how much people recognize that these deadly weapons have no place in their homes and around their families.”
Long Beach Police Chief Wally Hebeish credited the partnership for the turnout. “I want to express my appreciation for Supervisor Janice Hahn’s partnership and every community member who participated in this year’s Gun Buy Back event,” said Hebeish. “Together, we took another meaningful step toward creating a safer Long Beach.”
The haul included 153 pistols, 149 rifles, 50 shotguns, 50 ghost guns and 28 assault rifles. Participants received Amazon gift cards ranging from $50 for non-functioning weapons up to $300 for assault rifles — and demand outpaced supply, with organizers running out of gift cards before the line of residents did.
Beyond the exchange itself, the county’s Office of Violence Prevention distributed free gun locks to attendees who chose to keep firearms at home, aimed at preventing accidental discharge or unauthorized use, particularly by children.
Whether buybacks meaningfully reduce gun violence remains one of the more contested questions in criminal justice research.
The RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan think tank headquartered in Santa Monica, found little proof that buybacks lower crime rates, partly because the firearms collected represent a small fraction of guns in any community. They also found participants tend to be older, lower-risk gun owners rather than those involved in street violence.
Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, told Fox40 News that buybacks are used less as a crime-fighting tool than as a starting point.
They are a way to build community trust and connect residents to safer-storage education that can complement, but not replace, more targeted violence-reduction strategies, Wintemute told the outlet.
