Summary
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has launched the nationwide “Yes to Disarmament, Yes to Peace” program.
The program offers cash to citizens who anonymously surrender firearms, including $430 for revolvers, $1,200 for AK-47s, and $1,300 for machine guns.
The weapons will be destroyed.
The program, expanded from a 2019 Mexico City initiative, aims to combat violent crime, with firearms responsible for 70% of Mexico’s 31,062 homicides in 2023.
Brazil did something similar a couple decades ago and it helped reduce numbers of violent crimes to some extent. The numbers were constantly going up year after year and this iniative made it go down drastically, but it continued going up at the same rate as it did before. After a decade or so it was already at the same rate as it used to be before they got the guns - and it kept going further up since
Interesting. Did the buyback offer eventually expire, or the buyback rates not increase? If either were the case, renewing it might continue to have benefits. Like I said, a good solution but not a permanent one.