John Beale, Post-Gazette
	Guns taken in at the Goods for Guns center set up in the former fire station on the Blvd. of the Allies.

One worried mother walked into the Homestead police station yesterday to turn in two handguns.

She said her 17-year-old son had somehow gotten hold of the weapons. Her job was to take them away -- forever.

She did it through the 12th annual gun buyback program organized by Goods for Guns of Allegheny County and the Pittsburgh Housing Authority.

The woman left with $100 in Shop 'n Save grocery certificates -- $50 for each handgun -- and the hope that her teenager had averted trouble.

Skip Bowyer, a Wilkinsburg man who has volunteered in the gun buyback program for four years, said he is convinced it saves lives. The citizenry can dispose of unwanted guns anytime by handing them to police, but the buyback seems to spur people to act. They can remain anonymous when they exchange guns for grocery coupons.

"I think it does some good. I feel this with my heart," Mr. Bowyer said.

In all, 231 guns were handed in yesterday.

Pittsburgh police Lt. Philip Dacey, who has worked in the program since its inception in 1994, said responsible people use the buyback system to make their homes and neighborhoods safer.

"No one expects to get the hard rocks off the streets -- the gang members," he said. "But we get the girlfriends, the mothers and the wives bringing in guns."

One year, he said, a mother brought in five guns she found under her teenage son's bed.

Perhaps a bigger part of the program is keeping unwanted guns out of the reach of young children.

Kevin Manko, of Elizabeth Township, turned in two long guns to the Homestead police building. With 1- and 3-year-old daughters, he decided his home would be safer without the weapons.

"They were my father's," Mr. Manko said of the guns. "I really didn't have a need for them."

He received $50 in Shop 'n Save certificates, as the program pays $25 for a rifle or shotgun.

This year's buyback almost collapsed for lack of support. It lost Giant Eagle as a sponsor in the middle of last week, Lt. Dacey said. Had Shop 'n Save not stepped in, there would have been no buyback day, he said.

The program operated on a budget of about $13,000, mostly from donations. Lt. Dacey said that was less than one-fourth the amount available in the inaugural year.

With much less to work with, organizers ran seven buyback sites instead of nine. They also were forced to cut the program from two days to one, which they said made it less effective.

Publicity about the first day always made a second day doubly successful in getting guns off the streets, Lt. Dacey said. A second day would have taken in 500 to 600 guns, organizers said, instead of the 231 collected yesterday.

Emergency room physicians launched the buyback program in the 1990s, and they still believe in it.

"The biggest part of this is prevention," said Dr. Joan Mavrinac, a West Penn Hospital physician who was at the Downtown Pittsburgh collection site. "This can have a direct effect on the safety of children."