'Money for Guns' Exchange Program Intends to Cut Down on Violence Kate Kilpatrick - Fox News Latino
go to original February 20, 2013

Mexico City offers exchange of cash for guns (AlJazeeraEnglish)

MEXICO CITY –  Taking a seat in a folding metal chair in a garage behind Saint Michael the Archangel Church, 78-year-old grandmother Maria de Jesus Rodriguez Vidal unwrapped her purple shawl, opened her brown purse and removed a .22-caliber revolver tucked inside a red cloth pouch.

She wanted to get rid of it.

The government was glad to take it off her hands.

"Because of the danger to the children and the family in general," soft-spoken Rodriguez said last week when asked why she had decided to turn in the weapon. She said it belonged to her husband, a prison guard until his death 8 years ago.

Taking the gun from her, a government official returned the favor, handing her an Android D2 tablet, $50 in cash and a voucher to buy food staples such as beans, sugar and milk.

It's all part of Mexico City’s gun buyback program, launched in December 2012 to help curb out-of-control violence propagated by the country’s years-long drug war.

As part of the program, educators select neighborhoods and then go door to door explaining to residents the dangers of keeping weapons at home.

Then they set up shop at a Catholic church in the community where for a week or two they invite neighbors to drop off their guns, cartridges, and grenades — in one case even an aircraft bomb — no questions asked.

Read the whole story at Fox News Latino

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