Archdiocese of Baltimore hosts gun buyback in Southwest Baltimore Saturday

The Archdiocese of Baltimore will hold its fourth Gun Buyback and Peacebuilding Fair on Aug. 8 at Westside Shopping Center in Southwest Baltimore, collecting unwanted firearms from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2413 Frederick Avenue. Participants can turn in guns for compensation, and the goal is to remove weapons from homes and keep them off the street.

1,056 unwanted firearms have been voluntarily surrendered and destroyed through the program to date. Each gun taken in through the partnership with the Baltimore Police Department is destroyed, reducing the risk of robbery, suicide, domestic violence and accidental shootings.

Westside Shopping Center sits near Carrollton Ridge and Millhill, placing the buyback inside neighborhoods that have long lived with the city’s gun violence problem rather than at a downtown civic site removed from daily life.

A 2023 buyback at Edmondson Village Shopping Center collected more than 300 guns, and earlier archdiocese materials put the total at 362 firearms removed from the streets of Baltimore by that point. In 2023, archdiocese materials said more than $50,000 had been raised from Catholic parishes and individual donors for a buyback and resource fair with a dozen community-based partners.