Behind the guns, many stories

Their names were unimportant. Their faces were not remembered. All they needed were two things: a gun and the courage to turn it in.

Participants in Aim For Peace, Boston's 2006 gun buyback program, were granted anonymity by the police officers and community volunteers welcoming them at drop-off sites from Jamaica Plain to East Boston. They arrived with a gun -- some of them with several -- and left with a $200 Target gift certificate for each working weapon.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said most people wanted to participate in the buyback program because they realized the danger a gun represented. ``They wanted to become part of the solution" to reduce violence in their neighborhoods, he said.

``Everybody had very private and personal reasons for turning firearms over," said police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll. She said no names were taken.

Almost 1,000 guns and about $135,000 in gift cards and tax-reduction receipts later, a picture of those who handed in guns emerges through anecdotes provided by police and Jorge Martinez, executive director of Project RIGHT Inc. in Roxbury.

The stories differed as much as the people involved. They were men and women, grandparents and young adults, from all neighborhoods and ethnic groups.

There was the 30-year-old father from Mattapan who handed over to Officer Cecil Jones a new 9mm Beretta worth $800 to $1,200, by police estimates. He told Jones he was tired of the violence, and had lost a 12-year-old nephew to an accidental gunshot wound in February, according to Driscoll. The nephew's face was pictured on his 4-year-old son's T-shirt as the father and son showed up to turn in the gun, as if the dead boy were watching over the scene.

On July 5, an upset wife in Chinatown arranged a private exchange with Jones. While cleaning, her young daughter found a loaded Smith & Wesson .38-caliber pistol in an arts and crafts box hidden under the mother's bed, according to Driscoll. She said the woman told Jones she had no idea her husband owned the gun -- or that it lay so close to where the children played.

There was the lawyer who turned in a gun for his young client. And the Dorchester grandmother who told police she had prayed for days for divine guidance before delivering her grandson's automatic handgun. Driscoll said one woman had rounded up five weapons -- four revolvers and one semi automatic -- and ammunition from people in her building and turned them in to Jones at a Roxbury location.

Boston Police Deputy Superintendent Darrin Greeley, who ran the program at 19 collection sites, said the buyback did not attract as many youths as police would have liked, especially the ``hard-core" kids. But it did get the community involved and brought in ``high-quality" and ``crime guns" off the streets, Greeley said.

Women deserved the most credit for gun drop-offs, according to Martinez. At his site, 35 guns and many rifles were collected.

Martinez said the majority of exchanges he witnessed were with women.

For him, the reason was simple. Because ``women, God bless youse, have common sense," Martinez said.

Some women, he said, told Martinez that a son or significant other who had died or was in jail had left a gun in the house and that until the buyback program the women had not known what to do with it.

The move was a leap of faith for community members. Martinez said he and his staff worked hard to make their visitors comfortable, despite the potential for a tense situation. The strategy worked.

``Sometimes you don't have to ask" for their stories, Martinez said. ``People just start telling you."