A church in Indiana has launched a gun buyback campaign in response to the school shooting that resulted in 17 deaths in Parkland, Florida in February.
Members of Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church in Crawfordsville are offering $100 grocery store gift cards to gun owners who are willing to turn in their weapons. Those who turn in their gun accessories like bump stocks or large capacity clips will get $25 gift cards.
Church members David and Sheridan Hadley said that they felt the need for the campaign after seeing another mass shooting that claimed the lives of young people.
"We grieved and we were shocked once again by the mass killing in Parkland, and that was only the most recent. Go back to Sandy Hook and Colorado ... seeing the kids running out of the school and away from the school was heartbreaking," said David Hadley, as reported by Indy Star.
"My wife and I were both career-long educators and have been dealing with children and young people all of our working lives, and we thought, what can we do to make our children and our grandchildren and our community safer?" he added.
During a meeting, the Hadleys and other church members recalled that the church carried out several buy back programs in the early 2000s.
In the previous campaigns, the church was able to collect around 40 weapons that were mostly old guns and rifles that the owners did not want anymore.
David Hadley said that the church is now looking to collect "military-style semi-automatic weapons" and accessories that make the guns "more lethal than they already are."
The Hadleys maintained that they support the Second Amendment and noted that they themselves are gun owners. But they argued that the guns they are looking to collect in the buyback campaign are weapons of mass destruction. He is hoping that others will be compelled by their faith to help in the campaign, which will take place at the church on April 28 between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.
David Hadley said he hopes that people will see the buyback program as an opportunity to get rid of weapons that "have no useful purpose other than killing people."
The weapons collected by the Hadleys will be turned over to the Crawfordsville Police Department, and will be melted down at Nucor Steel in Montgomery County for safe disposal. The gift cards that will be given in exchange for the weapons were paid for with grants and church donations, according to WTHR.
