Prince George, B.C. – The  details have yet to be  ironed out,  but a plan is being  developed  for a province wide  firearms  amnesty .

(at right,  some of the firearms surrendered during  the June 2013  province wide amnesty – photo courtesy RCMP)

There are no details on  when  the amnesty will  be offered, or  how long it  will  last.

It’s been  three years since the last  time such an amnesty was offered,  where people could surrender  firearms or other weapons to police  without  repercussions,  as long as the  item had not been used in the commission of a crime.

In June of 2013,  that month long  amnesty  saw  about 1800 firearms  turned  over to police agencies across BC and  just over 155  other  unwanted  weapons  surrendered.

Of that number, 44  firearms  were turned over to the Prince George RCMP,   the number made up of 34 long guns and 10 hand guns.  Among the unwanted  weapons,  was a  grenade.

The  planning for a  new Province wide amnesty  is part of the  $23 million dollar  Guns and Gangs Strategy that  rolled out  a little over a month ago.

While much of the focus of that  strategy has been on the lower mainland,  several  arrests have been made  in the north including:

• four in Prince George following a targeted shooting  in  a parking lot  near  Upland and  17th,
• an arrest in Williams Lake  following a complaint of shots being fired at the former residence of a person who claimed to be a gang member  and
• multiple arrests and the seizure of millions of dollars’ worth of illegal drugs in the Lower Mainland and Northern B.C., which CFSEU-BC linked to a Fraser Valley crime syndicate operating in the north.

In addition to developing a  province wide  gun amnesty,  the  Guns and Gangs strategy  continues to  work on forming the two new 10 person  gang disruption and interdiction teams within the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU) and   the new  Office of Crime Reduction and Gang Outreach  is in the process of  hiring its staff.