Sunday, December 20, 2009
Doctor thrilled over firearms collected
Goods For Guns gets 241 guns off street
Picture
Detective Joe Tanona, left, and Sgt. Gary Quitadamo examine a rifle brought in during the second phase of the Goods For Guns program at Worcester Police headquarters yesterday. (T&G Staff/RICK CINCLAIR)
By Thomas Caywood TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
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WORCESTER — Dr. Michael Hirsh and his trauma surgeon colleagues at UMass Memorial Medical Center know all too well the damage inflicted on flesh by guns in street shootings and accidents at home.
That’s why Dr. Hirsh said he was so thrilled that 241 firearms collected yesterday and the previous Saturday in exchange for retail gift cards are now off the street and out of drawers and, instead, locked up in the police station until they can be crushed at a local metal shop.
Dr. Hirsh, chief of UMass Memorial’s Division of Pediatric Surgery and Trauma, said he was especially pleased by the quality of the firearms swept up in the eighth annual Goods For Guns Program, in cooperation with city police and the Worcester District Attorney’s office.
Of the 241 firearms collected in the police station lobby over the last two Saturdays, 169 were handguns, including 76 semiautomatic pistols.
“Those are the weapons of interpersonal destruction. When fights break out, these are the weapons people have hidden in their pockets or palmed in their hands,” Dr. Hirsh said.
Sometimes such weapons are just as dangerous forgotten in a cabinet or dresser in the home of a law-abiding resident, he said.
“When little kids encounter them in a drawer, they think they’re toys, and that’s how the accidental shootings occur,” he said.
Dr. Hirsh said one woman who decided to bring in her late husband’s pistol yesterday, which had been stored in a bedside table, told her grandson what she was doing. The young man led her to a drawer in another part of the house.
“There was another gun that he knew about, but grandma didn’t. Those are the kinds of the weapons that we are so grateful to get,” Dr. Hirsh said.
The previous Saturday, a woman whose late husband was a Vietnam veteran brought in a loaded AK-47 assault rifle that had been stored in a closet — with 30 clips of ammunition and a bayonet affixed.
“I have no doubt that all of these weapons are deadly. The police screen all of them. If they’re not operable, or if they’re junk, they won’t redeem them for a gift card,” he said.
Those dropping off firearms were given gift cards to Walmart. Rifles were redeemed for $25, revolvers for $50 and semiautomatic pistols for $75.
The number of guns collected this year was consistent with earlier years of the program, but up from the 127 firearms collected last year. Dr. Hirsh attributed the dip in collections last year to the ice storm that happened around the same time and a change of location that year from the police station lobby to the city Department of Public Health building.
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