By Patrick McGroarty
Reporter Staff

The "Aim for Peace" gun buyback officially began at noon on Monday, and by 7 p.m. on Tuesday 92 working handguns had been turned over to the Boston Police Department.

The department also collected a small number of rifles, shotguns, and badly damaged handguns, weapons that did not qualify for the $200 Target gift card.

"The response has been overwhelming," said Elaine Driscoll, director of media relations for the BPD. Approximately 100 people had called the buyback hotline by Monday afternoon, said Driscoll, asking where they could drop off a weapon or requesting that a cruiser be sent to their house for an individual pick-up.

Five weapons were turned in through individually arranged exchanges even before the buyback officially opened at noon on Monday, all of them handguns eligible for the $200 gift card.

Mayor Thomas Menino met with reporters on Monday afternoon in front of the Hyde Square Task Force to review the program's first day of operation. By 4:30 p.m., said the mayor, 36 handguns had been delivered to police stations and community drop-off points across the city.

"We had a mother walk in with two guns, each in a sock, and a young man in Codman Square who turned his weapon in," said Menino citing his two favorite anecdotes from the hours-old buyback. "I give that mother a lot of credit for standing up and being brave. Now, we need more people to stand up and be brave."

The mayor returned to the mother's story when asked whom he most hoped would be inspired to participate in the buyback.

"Mothers, that's what we're looking for," he said. "Two months ago, I had a mother step forward and tell me that she had found two guns under her son's bed. That mother didn't turn those weapons in."

Tina Chery, founder of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, said that asking mothers to take part in the program was important, but only as the first step of a larger commitment to taking guns out of the hands of teenagers.

"The gun buyback is important, but it's a back-end solution to getting guns out of homes," said Chery. "We need to go a step further and find out where they came from."

Chery had planned for a gathering on the corner of Bowdoin and Toplift Streets to take place at 11 a.m. Thursday morning, where she said mothers of children murdered by gun violence or incarcerated for gun possession would come together to ask the police department to step up their efforts to track the path of weapons into the city.

"We want the police department to go after illegal gun dealers, to use all the technology we have to track where these weapons are coming from," she said.

The mayor admitted at Monday's press conference that it is incredibly challenging to prevent the flow of guns into urban Boston from out of state, saying that Boston is at the forefront of illegal gun transfer. A solution to that larger problem, said BPD Superintendent-in-Chief Albert E. Goslin, lies beyond the reach of this month-long buyback. "We are working closely with federal partners and looking closely at [gun control] strategies," said Goslin. "I'm not saying that we'll inundate the federal system with gun cases, but we're going to do what we can to get people involved in trafficking weapons off the streets."

Fifteen to 20 weapons had been turned in at Dorchester Drop-off sites by Tuesday evening, said BPD Deputy Superintendent Darrin Greely. Approved Dorchester sites include the C-11 and B-3 police stations, the Codman Square Health Center, and Project Right in Grove Hall. Among the guns turned in to district C-11 on Monday were a .40 caliber pistol and 9 mm pistol, high-powered weapons of the stock officials were most hoping to collect through the buyback. The department refused to accept several weapons on Monday, including a starter pistol and two badly damaged handguns. However, they did accept a badly damaged handgun from a Mattapan woman without offering her the gift card.

Praise for the buyback was punctuated by more midweek violence on Dorchester's streets. Dorchester recorded two homicides on Tuesday evening, one a shooting on Owencroft Street and the other a stabbing in Codman Square. Those incidents marked the 29th and 30th murders of 2006, and as of June 11 non-fatal shootings in the city had skyrocketed from 88 to 160 over the same period last year; stark reminders of the sentiment, stressed time and again in recent weeks by the mayor, police officials, and community leaders, that even a successful gun buyback is only a small piece of the larger solution.

"Is the buyback successful? I guess it is. But what do we do with the child we took the gun away from?" asked Chery. "Have we asked them why they need a gun? What happens after the buyback ends in July? We have to do things with a multi-level approach."