NRA has often reported on failed “gun buyback” programs in cities across the country as being worse than useless. Unfortunately, for some, these programs have led to even more dangerous and life-threatening consequences. While the Chicago Police “gun turn-in program” website states that “all guns are destroyed and never returned to the streets,” that was not the case for Twanda Willingham. Ms. Willingham recently filed suit against the City of Chicago and others after she was shot with a Glock 21 .45 caliber handgun that had been relinquished to Chicago police at a gun turn-in event in December 2023. The same firearm that was used to shoot Ms. Willingham was then used in at least two other shootings before being discovered on a 16-year old boy months later, as we reported back in April of this year.
According to the recently filed lawsuit, after the firearm was transferred to the tactical team office following the turn-in event, the Glock disappeared in a room full of police officers. In the subsequent investigation, it was discovered that a tag identifying the Glock had been hidden on a different firearm. The tag that should have accompanied the Glock was later found in the trash, evidence of a purposeful theft and cover-up to make it more difficult to track the firearm or its recovery. Further adding to the drama, the officer that was listed on those inventory records was later shot and killed by a fellow tactical team officer in what the police department labeled a friendly fire accident during a police pursuit.
No one was ever charged in any of the three crimes in which the Glock was used and the police sergeant that supervised the gun turn-in event where the firearm disappeared was suspended for one day for “failure to adequately secure and care for department property.”
In a city with some of the harshest and most restrictive gun control laws in the nation, the bottom line is that a criminal got a hold of a firearm due to its apparent theft by a police officer. This was facilitated, ironically, by an event supposedly designed to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals.
Sadly, this was not an isolated event for the city of Chicago, nor for other states. A similar situation unfolded previously in Chicago, where another firearm, expected to be inventoried and destroyed following a turn-in event, instead was later found next to the body of a man shot and killed in a police-involved shooting.
Public safety is not enhanced by gun “turn-in” programs and certainly not in Chicago. For over three decades now, researchers from all sides of the gun policy debate appear to agree on the ineffectiveness of firearm turn-in events in reducing violent crime. In fact, some statistical and anecdotal evidence shows that they can be considered counterproductive and downright dangerous.
Local efforts, like Chicago’s gun “turn-in” program, certainly contribute to perpetuating an official anti-gun orthodoxy by local government entities. But they also continue to serve as socially engineered distractions to the honest conversations needed on real public safety measures, which now should include accountability for government officials involved in the sort of debacles alleged in Ms. Willingham’s suit.
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