King County Sheriff's Office hosts gun buyback event in Burien

Nearly 300 guns bought in King County buyback

The?King County Sheriff?s Office?hosted their?first gift card exchange?for guns Saturday.?The program takes a lot of funding.?Starting off today with $40,000 of gift cards.?

BURIEN, Wash. - Law enforcement is taking guns off the street. The King County Sheriff’s Office was buying guns back as part of a county program aiming to take guns out of circulation.

The event was also the first gift card exchange for guns, starting off today with $40,000 of gift cards.  The program takes a lot of funding.

"You look at what we’re experiencing right now in terms of gun violence and shootings and so forth," said Sergeant Corbett Ford with the King County Sheriff’s Office. 

He added, "but we think that this is one small piece of the pie in trying to help reduce gun violence and guns out in the streets." 

Collecting 287 firearms and a giveaway of $36,525 of gift cards. 

Cars lined up outside the King County Sheriff's Office in Burien from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the process is simple. It involved a drive-thru event with people dropping off their unwanted guns, no questions asked and no ID needed, but serial numbers are double-checked. A move to ensure guns are not stolen. 

"We’ve even actually had one person brought in 15 guns earlier." Ford said.

Funding is provided by the King County Council. They passed legislation that freed up $100,000 for programs like this. 

"You don’t want to have an injury from a firearm to a loved one, let alone a death, and so if we can reduce those with a little bit of investment, it’s well worth it," said Councilmember District One Rod Dembowski with the King County Council.

Councilmember District Two Girmay Zahilay says each gun taken out of circulation lowers the chances of a future shooting, that for every gun that is taken off the street it’s going to help reduce the risk of gun violence. 

"We (United States) do have a unique situation where we have so much more gun violence than other developed countries and that is absolutely because of the prevalence of guns," said Zahilay.

The gift cards were worth up to $300.

 The King County Sheriff’s Office hopes to have more of these gift card exchange for guns events in the future.