{"id":274780,"date":"2026-04-18T23:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T23:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/274780\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T23:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T23:01:09","slug":"oakland-buyback-collects-100-plus-guns-to-be-turned-into-garden-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/274780\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland buyback collects 100-plus guns to be turned into garden tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two AK-style rifles, one AR-15, a few\u00a0Glock pistols and two Uzi submachine guns \u2014 one small enough to fit in a backpack.<\/p>\n<p>These were some of the more than 100 firearms collected by volunteers from faith congregations and the Oakland Police Department on Saturday in an effort to cultivate new uses for the weapons \u2014 as garden tools.<\/p>\n<p>The Guns to Gardens buyback program encouraged community members to exchange firearms \u2014 no questions asked \u2014 for Target gift cards worth up to $300, as well as garden tools formed from previous exchanges. The weekend event, held in the parking lot of At Thy Word Ministries in East Oakland, marked the faith-based group\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/bayarea\/article\/oakland-gun-buyback-21170227.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sixth iteration<\/a> of the program.<\/p>\n<p>After a firearm is brought in, OPD checks its serial number to make sure it wasn\u2019t stolen. The weapon is then disabled, with rifles and shotguns turned into garden trowels and tillers.<\/p>\n<p>Having a firearm in the home dramatically increases the risk of suicide, homicide and accidental injury of household members, organizers of the buyback said. Guns in the home are also a prime target for thieves, who use them for other crimes, the organizers said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt just takes one incident, a gun being in the wrong place, in the wrong time around the wrong individual \u2026 and it changes everybody\u2019s life,\u201d said OPD Capt. Gordon Dorham.<\/p>\n<p>Research on the effectiveness of gun buybacks is mixed, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rand.org\/research\/gun-policy\/analysis\/essays\/gun-buyback-programs.html\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">recent studies<\/a> showing that the voluntary programs have not significantly reduced violence, homicide or overall crime on their own.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you do a thousand hours of work, you save one life, that\u2019s it \u2014 that\u2019s what it\u2019s worth,\u201d said John Colle Rogers, the Oakland blacksmith who uses the surrendered weapons to make garden tools.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the surrendered guns are broken or in poor condition, said volunteer Andrew Hawthorn. Other donors inherited their guns from family members but don\u2019t want them. One of the firearms exchanged Saturday was owned by a man on parole whose grandmother persuaded him to give it up, according to Hawthorn.<\/p>\n<p>Volunteer Cara Meredith said Mayor Barbara Lee has encouraged Guns to Gardens to hold its buyback event each quarter. The group is seeking additional funding from the city and donors to do so. Each event, Meredith said, costs roughly $10,000 for gift cards and a stipend for Rogers.<\/p>\n<p>Guns to Gardens is inspired by Isaiah 2:4, a prophecy of universal peace that declares that nations will \u201cbeat their swords into plowshares\u201d by transforming tools of war into agricultural instruments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cci_tagline_name\" title=\"CCI Tagline Name\">Chronicle photographer\u00a0Yalonda M. James contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two AK-style rifles, one AR-15, a few\u00a0Glock pistols and two Uzi submachine guns \u2014 one small enough to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[184,723,332,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-274780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area","tag-crime","tag-east-bay","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}