Natick police collected 57 firearms at a gun buyback event Oct. 11, including 36 handguns, six shotguns, three rifles and 12 other weapons such as BB guns and starter pistols.
The event at Hartford Street Presbyterian Church exchanged gift cards for firearms as part of an effort to remove unwanted weapons from homes. Residents were encouraged to drive to the church with unloaded firearms in their trunks, where Natick police and the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Office workers collected, recorded and disassembled the weapons.
“A family member died. These guns were in the attic. They’re in the basement. Family has no interest in them. (People are) looking for a safe process in which to get rid of these guns,” said Lt. Christopher Foley of the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office. “It’s going to keep them out of the hands of children, the mentally ill (and) potentially criminals.”
The buyback was organized by former Natick Select Board member Erica Ball, her husband, Jay Ball, and Natick resident Richard Sidney. Gift cards from Amazon, Ben & Jerry’s and Stop & Shop were purchased with a $10,000 grant from the MetroWest Health Foundation. Leftover cards were donated to local nonprofits including A Place to Turn, Family Promise Metrowest and the Natick Service Council.
“The idea of a gun buyback started when I was still actively involved in the town, “said Erica Ball. “Especially in urban settings, I don’t think that there’s a place for guns. If you live in the West and you hunt, or you either hunt for your livelihood or hunt for sport, that may be a different story.”
Natick Chief of Police James Hicks said the program is a response to the problem of unlicensed residents finding firearms in relatives’ homes and not knowing how to dispose of them. “They are not licensed, so they know they can’t handle them, but just keep them,” he said. “And then it ends up where you end up with a weapon that may be in a house that it shouldn’t be.”
According to a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report, there were 270 gun deaths in Massachusetts in 2023. Of those, 121 were homicides, 147 were suicides and 10 were people younger than 17.
“Every time I hear of one of these gun shootings, my heart just breaks,” Erica Ball said. “I’m someone who’s lost a child not to a gun, (but) to a truck accident. I have experienced what that feels like, and every time I hear about it, or I see this needless loss of life … I say to myself, ‘There must be something we can do.’ And this is one way, and it feels good.”
Foley and his team checked to make sure the firearms were not loaded before placing them in the trunk of the police vehicle on site, which was designed for the storage of ammunition and firearms.
The firearms were then logged and examined to make sure they weren’t stolen or used in a crime. Afterward, the fully functional firearms were to be sent to the Massachusetts State Police Firearms Identification Unit for destruction, while incomplete firearms were to be sent to scrap metal recycling company Schnitzer Northeast.