Bloomington, IL Gun ‘Buyback’ Paying $200, $400 and $500 EACH For ‘Unwanted’ Guns This Sunday

Trick or treat, smell their feet cash. The Bloomington, Illinois Police Department will be hosting a “gun buyback” this Sunday, October 29th. They’re seeking “unwanted” or unloved guns and they’re paying a premium price for them.

After a call to the Bloomington PD this morning, I learned they’re paying $200 for rifles, shotguns, and handguns. Wait, it gets a lot better. They’re paying $400 for ‘unwanted’ ghost guns. And they’re paying $500 for unwanted “assault” guns.

My question is this: Is their definition of “assault” guns the same as in the PICA gun & magazine ban law?

Either way, it seems incumbent upon us to help them make this buyback a BIG success.

Do you have any unwanted, non-functioning, or barely functioning firearms? Do you have any antiques that you have no use for? Or even modern guns like the KelTec P3AT, the Ruger LCP or worse yet, a Taurus Curve that are effectively obsolete and nearly worthless?  Here’s your chance to sell them to some do-gooders for a fair amount of perfectly good cash.

What we don’t want to see are cash-strapped people turning in their home defense firearms for Christmas money. If they do that, someday they might relate to the Guns Save Life highway sign set that reads: DIALED 911…AND I’M ON HOLD…SURE WISH I HAD…THAT GUN I SOLD…GunsSaveLife.com.

I’d recommend getting there around 9am or so (the location is 2602 Six Points Road in Bloomington). There will be a line. There always is. And given the prices they’re paying, they’ll be out of cash within the first half-hour or so. Guaranteed.

More at their Facebook page…

Got Guns?

I serve as the Executive Director, Chief Bottle Washer, and occasional gun scrubber at Guns Save Life in Illinois and we love gun buybacks. Guns Save Life has quite a reputation for nailing gun buybacks many times over the years (see here, here, and here). We even collected about $6500 for youth shooting programs, courtesy of the city of Chicago about ten years ago. That led to some international publicity and a shutdown of that program for two or three years.

However, we likely won’t be participating in this one because yours truly is all out of clunkers.

While we’re running on empty, if any of TTAG’s dear readers would like to take your broken-down stuff out to the fire station on Six Points Road and deliver them to the do-gooders, have at it.

Then if you want to donate those funds to GSL for use in our youth shooting programs across Illinois, we at Guns Save Life will happily accept the cash and/or pre-paid gift cards. Heaven knows there are countless worthy school clays programs, Pheasants Forever Young Guns programs and youth shooting camps across the state that could use a few hundred (or thousand) bucks for practice ammo.

We don’t want you to drop off your guns with us and I’ll tell you why . . .

We’ve already been targeted by overzealous law enforcement officers trying to lure us into ignoring waiting periods and proper protocols for private transfers of firearms in our state. They wanted to drop off “close to a dozen” guns for our next buyback adventure. I suspect they would have then returned, along with friends carrying flashbangs, a battering ram for my front door, and a shiny set of handcuffs.

Why aren’t those cops out there busting gang bangers carrying full-auto GLOCKs? I don’t know. Maybe that’s more dangerous than trying to bait a CCW holder and leader of a gun rights org into violating Illinois’ incredibly restrictive gun control laws.

Remember, the fun starts at 10am. Good luck.