Ann Arbor Church to Host Second Annual Gun Buyback

Ann Arbor’s St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church will sponsor a gun buyback event Oct. 11 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The buyback, in an aim to address and reduce gun violence, will allow people to bring unwanted guns with intact serial numbers and turn them over to the church, where the weapons will be broken down into unusable pieces and turned into art projects.

“People who don’t want any weapons, they can bring their unwanted handguns, long guns or assault rifles, and we will give them a Kroger gift card and destroy [the gun] right in front of them,” Reverend Tom Ferguson of St. Aidan’s said. “And then they can see the gun destroyed. They know that it’s safely disposed of. And they can also go to our craft table. We have a little craft table where you can make art, and we have art projects you can make, or art you can buy that are made with parts of guns that we’ve chopped up.”

According to a study done in 2023, 58% of gun deaths are suicides. Ferguson emphasized the importance of mental health in discussions about gun violence.

“Maybe 20% or 30% of the people don’t want the gift cards,” he said. “And we have people giving us donations, saying just, thank you for doing this. So yeah, it’s a small token, but I think it’s a great symbol of what our mission would be: to take care of people and to keep them safe.”

St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church joined this project in 2024, but the larger organization helping put this event on, Disarmory Ministries, has been hosting gun buybacks for several years. According to Ferguson, Reverend Chris Yaw began the project after discovering many city police departments dismantle guns turned into them and resell the parts to manufacturers.

“That’s not what we wanted to do,” Ferguson said. “We wanted to take guns out of circulation. People were turning in their guns wanting to get rid of them, and then they were going back on the street. So that’s when we started chopping them up. And a lot of people come with a kind of trauma, with these stories, and they’re just so relieved to have a place to safely dispose of them.”

The buyback will take place Oct. 11 at 1679 Broadway St., 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. At noon, the church will present the Golden Gun Lock Award to State Representative Morgan Foreman, selected by End Gun Violence MI.