Chicago Criminal attorney comments on guns, gift cards, & Mother's Day

This Chicago Criminal attorney has posted here and here about guns in Chicago.  She admits to being surprised at the record number of weapons surrendered in exchange for a $100 gift card.

May 8, Chicago, Il

There were shiny six-shooter revolvers, polished wooden rifles, semiautomatic handguns, pistols, rifles and even two hand grenades.

In a citywide effort Saturday to try to curb the violence on Chicago streets, police collected more than 4,000 guns and other weapons in exchange for gift cards worth up to $100.

Residents frustrated by the gun violence that has long plagued their neighborhoods marched through the streets, many of them bereaved mothers who recited poems, sang songs and prayed for an end to the shooting.

"No mother should have to bury a son," said Vallie Smith, whose son, Mario Hines, 21, was shot to death in March. Hines had been arrested in 2007 for illegally carrying a handgun himself.

Call me jaded but somehow I think a struggling economy coupled with Mother’s Day the next day accounted largely to the massive number of weapons.