Courtesy of Big Chicken
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Since moving to North Texas, NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal has made a splash in several ways. He has hosted a music festival, announced a chain of chicken restaurants and popped up around town helping out complete strangers pay for some pricey items. Now, he’s using his A-list status and bank account to perhaps make a different sort of impact in Dallas.
On Saturday, Feb. 10, O’Neal is co-sponsoring a gun buyback event with the Dallas County Sheriff’s office.
In a video posted to the sheriff department’s Facebook page, Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown said this is the first gun buyback event hosted by a Dallas County sheriff. In the video, she encouraged people to “bring those unwanted weapons that are lying around the house” to the event.
“This is an opportunity for law enforcement to educate and equip community members with the tools to properly dispose of unwanted firearms,” Brown wrote in a statement to NBC 5. “Too many deaths have occurred from firearms lying around and they end up in the hands of the vulnerable population.”
In the same NBC 5 report, O’Neal added: “I support Sheriff Brown’s initiatives; [the] Sheriff is doing the right thing and keeping our communities safe.”
“Too many deaths have occurred from firearms lying around and they end up in the hands of the vulnerable population.” – Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown
O’Neal, 51, played 19 years in the NBA, winning four championships before becoming one of the most popular television personalities in all of sports. The big man has had a fascination with law enforcement for many years, dating to his playing days, when he was sworn in as a reserve police officer in Virginia in 2005.
People who turn in a handgun at the event on Saturday will receive a $100 gift card, and those turning in a “long gun” will receive a $125 gift card. We reached out to the Sheriff’s office to find out what kind of gift cards will be handed out Saturday, but we didn’t hear back before publication.
As infectious as Shaq’s smile and fun-loving presence are, gun buyback events haven’t proven to reduce gun violence. In November, we wrote about a gun buyback event that the city of Dallas hosted in October. More than 120 guns were turned in, a number that city officials were pleased with at the time.
Even when certain violent crime stats show a bit of progress, murders in Dallas continue to rise, and a gun buyback event that takes a couple hundred guns off the streets isn’t likely to impact the crime and murder numbers too dramatically. Besides, the chances are that most people turning in weapons at an event like this tend to skew more toward the law-abiding sort.
Dr. James Kelsay, assistant professor in the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Texas at Arlington, said the main purpose of these gun buyback programs is to remove guns from circulation, but that’s not all they’re good for.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole lot or any strong empirical evidence to suggest that gun buybacks are effective at reducing violence,” Kelsay told the Observer in November. “It can really sort of galvanize the community in terms of a common goal of trying to reduce gun violence. So, it’s sort of like a mobilization tool to bring people together, and I think that’s one of the positive things we can take from these.”
