Texas Offers People Money for Food in Exchange for Guns

A new program in Texas will allow residents to trade in their guns for a grocery gift card as it aims to take firearms out of circulation in local communities.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, an independent, non-partisan organization dedicated to reducing gun violence in the U.S., Texas has the 28th highest rate of gun violence in the US as about 3,996 people a year die by guns. To help curve the number of guns on Texas streets, San Antonio is hosting its first gun buyback program ahead of Thanksgiving on November 19 at the Alamodome, inviting area gun owners to safely dispose of unwanted weapons.

As part of the program, gun owners will receive an H-E-B, a Texas grocery store chain, gift card for each firearm they hand in via drive-thru and the value of the gift cards will depend on the firearm exchanged.

The project will pay $50 for a nonfunctioning or home-manufactured weapon, $150 for a rifle or shotgun, $200 for a handgun and $300 for a semi-automatic rifle.

The program is backed by District 9 Councilman John Courage, who has been wanting to hold such an event since 2017 but previously couldn't find the funding, according to San Antonio Express News.

"We can ask people to turn in weapons they no longer want, that they feel are a danger in their household, that maybe they've found, and exchange those for gift certificates so that people can go buy food for the holiday or go buy Christmas presents for their kids," Courage said on a June episode of the Express-News' Puro Politics podcast.

Participants are asked to place their unloaded weapons, max 20 per car, in the trunk or rear of their vehicles with safeties on and wait for a San Antonio Police Department officer to take them.

If traceable, authorities will return stolen firearms to their legal owners, Courage said, per The Express, but like Houston's weapons exchange program, San Antonio's event aims to take guns out of circulation entirely by destroying them and using them for an art display.

To help support the event, the San Antonio Area Foundation established a fund to accept tax-deductible contributions called the Safe Weapons Exchange and Education Transfer, or SWEET.

Newsweek has reached out to Courage via email for comment.

This comes as shootings across the state have continued to see an uptick even after the Uvalde massacre that claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers in May 2022.

Over the weekend, a shooting outside of Houston at a flea market claimed the life of a child with four others hurt, and a man was shot and killed outside of a Methodist church outside of Houston, according to CBS News.

In Austin, on Saturday three people were killed, including a responding SWAT officer who was shot and killed in a shootout with the suspect, police said.

Meanwhile, as gun violence impacts communities across the country with more than 37,000 gun violence-related deaths as of November, according to the Gun Violence Archive, debates over gun control across the country persist.

Gun safety laws often stir up intense political arguments with conservatives often pointing to the Second Amendment as a main argument while those in favor of tighter gun control disagree arguing the death toll amid mass shootings.

Texas most recently relaxed its gun laws in 2021 when Governor Greg Abbott signed what Republicans called a "constitutional carry" bill into law, allowing Texans to carry handguns without a license or training.

Additionally, Texas lawmakers have approved more than 100 bills that loosened regulations on firearms over the last two decades, from blocking campus "zero tolerance" policies that expelled gun-carrying students to preventing hotels from restricting handguns, according to data compiled by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

Newsweek has reached out to Abbott via email for comment.