JERSEY CITY – Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy and the Jersey City Police Department announced Thursday that the city will sponsor a gun buyback day on Saturday, Jan. 5. The buyback will take place from noon until 4:30 p.m. at the Evangelismos Greek Orthodox Church, 661 Montgomery St.
During the buyback residents can turn in rifles for $100 each. Handguns and automatic weapons will fetch $150, with no questions asked.
The cash for weapons program was made possible with the help of forfeiture funds from the Office of the Hudson County Prosecutor and donations from local corporations and private citizens.
This is the latest in a series of gun buybacks the Healy administration has sponsored since 2005. Previous gun buybacks took a total of 1,297 handguns, rifles, and assault weapons off the streets of Jersey City. Like the city’s previous gun buybacks the one this weekend will be an amnesty program, meaning that people who turn in weapons will not be questioned or prosecuted for any crimes that may be connected for the weapon they turn in.
“We firmly believe that the fewer guns that are out there in our city, the safer all of our residents, businesses and visitors will be,” said Healy, a charter member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the organization co-founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.
“Our initiative is funded without taxpayer dollars and over the course of the past several years has resulted in nearly 1,300 guns being removed from the households and streets of our city.”
Jersey City to sponsor another gun buyback; previous buybacks took 1,297 weapons off the streets
