Dumfries leaders are working to introduce a gun buyback program that will allow residents to sell firearms they no longer want to the town in exchange for cash.
According to state law, the town created an ordinance to state the purpose of the buyback program. Residents are invited to come and speak on the proposed gun buyback program during the town council’s public meeting on July 5, 2022.
The program, modeled after programs in other large cities, would be the first of its kind in the region. According to the ordinance’s language, the town’s police department would manage the program. Police could choose to sell or destroy the guns.
Councilman Brian Fields asked which option the town was considering. Town Manager Keith Rogers stopped his line of questioning, urging council members to pass the resolution before discussing the document’s contents and then schedule a public hearing. “It’s not appropriate to ask questions at this time,” said Rogers.
“We don’t want to get this thing to a public hearing and then have to come back and chop it up,” replied Mayor Derrick Wood.
Councilman Tyrone Brown urged Town Attorney Sharon Pandak, who wrote the resolution, to change the stated purpose of the gun buyback program from “reduce gun violence by decreasing the number of available firearms in the Town of Dumfries” to “allow citizens to sell their unwanted guns to reduce gun violence.”
“Words matter,” said Brown.
The council voted unanimously to move the item forward to a public hearing. Vice Mayor Monae Nickerson and Councilwoman Seolnia Miles pushed for the ordinance.
“It gets the guns off the streets. It gets the guns out of the home for those who no longer want to have them,” said Nickerson.
The proposal comes following a violent May in Prince Willam County where multiple people were shot, including a 9-year-old girl playing outside her home in Woodbridge and two adults attending a youth football game at Benton Middle School.
There were four homicides in the county in May, including a man shot dead in the parking lot of the Port-O-Dumfries neighborhood on May 16.
Last night, Prince William County Woodbridge District Supervisor Margaret Franklin hosted an online town hall to promote a gun bill that has received bi-partisan support in the U.S. Senate.
Drafted in response to the mass school shooting at Uvalde, Texas, the measure calls for stricter background checks, “red flag” laws that allow governments to confiscate guns from those it deems unfit to possess them, and more funding for mental health.
