Prince George's County police host gun turn-in, offer gift cards

At Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, Prince George’s County police offered anonymous gun turn-ins Thursday at 7707 Allentown Road, handing out gift cards worth $100 for shotguns and rifles, $125 for handguns and $150 for automatic rifles. The exchange, run with the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, took place from 10 a.m. to noon and let residents surrender weapons without being asked where they came from or why they were being turned in.

Police framed the program as a public-safety move meant to keep firearms out of the wrong hands and reduce the chances that a weapon sitting in a home, car or closet could later be stolen, misused or discharged in a crisis. That message carries added weight in Prince George’s County, where the police department describes itself as the fourth-largest law enforcement agency in Maryland and says it serves nearly 900,000 residents and business owners. The department’s Gun Crimes Unit investigates firearm-discharge cases, while the Gun Intel Unit tracks firearm recoveries and illegal trafficking.

The church setting also broadened the event beyond a simple exchange. Ebenezer AME Church listed the April 30 program as an expungement fair and gun buyback, paired with a mental-health session, and identified the host as the 78th Second District Conference of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. That mix of services suggested an outreach strategy aimed at reducing barriers for residents who might otherwise stay away from a police-only event.

County gun turn-ins have become a recurring measure of how much force the county can pull off the streets through voluntary surrender. WUSA9 reported that Prince George’s County’s November 2023 buyback collected 213 guns. DC News Now reported that a 2021 county buyback recovered nearly 300 guns and that police had already recovered 1,240 guns that year. The Washington Informer reported in 2023 that a previous buyback with Zion Church and First Baptist Church of Glenarden collected 1,200 weapons, while WTOP reported those two churches partnered with police on a 10th annual buyback in November 2022.

The numbers show why these events remain part of the county’s violence-prevention toolkit, even if their impact is hard to measure in a single day. Johns Hopkins’ Maryland gun-violence data lists 461 homicides, 267 suicides and 45 firearm deaths among children and teens ages 1 to 17, a reminder that gun policy in Prince George’s County is measured not just in weapons collected, but in the stakes around every handgun, rifle and shotgun taken out of circulation.