PlayStations for guns are offered up in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Dozens of cars lined up outside a New Orleans church parking lot this week as residents flocked to exchange firearms for video game consoles through a city-supported gun buyback initiative meant to improve public safety as Louisiana loosens gun ownership laws.

Leticia Clanton, 50, waited all morning Tuesday for the opportunity. While she had a permit to carry a concealed handgun she had owned for the past decade, she also has eight young grandchildren running around her home. Clanton chose to swap her weapon for a PlayStation 5 worth about $500.

“With all the grandkids and all the violence that they got going on, it’s time to get it up off the street,” Clanton said. As for the PlayStation? “It’s going to be for all of them to share when they come to the house.”

Over the course of two hours, city police officers received and dismantled 32 revolvers, shotguns and semi-automatics, all traded in with no questions asked as long the guns were functional. In all, the city collected 94 guns through three buybacks over the last six months, all involving swaps for gaming devices.

A local nonprofit, Unchained Realities, organized the exchanges as part of its Nola Grown gaming program that engages young people in the city with gaming. The nonprofit established two centers for youth to build skills and open up pathways to the gaming world, whether as a competitive player or through game development, graphic design and coding. A third center is in the works.

“If my inbox is filled up with people who say they want to do this, I just felt a necessity to go out and try to raise some more money,” said J.D. Carrere, co-director of the gaming program. Tuesday's event was paid for mainly through donations from two private businesses.

Carrere said the buybacks came in response to Louisiana's more relaxed gun ownership restrictions and harsher sentencing for violent crimes.

Shortly after taking office in 2024, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry pushed a tough-on-crime agenda through the GOP-dominated Legislature. The laws passed include mandating 17-year-olds be charged as adults and require anyone convicted of a crime to serve 85% of their sentence before they can be released.

Another law which went into effect in August allows most people 18 years or older to carry a concealed weapon without a government permit, a firearms training course or getting their fingerprints taken — all previous legal requirements.

Landry's office did not respond to a request for comment.

New Orleans has historically had one of the nation’s highest homicide rates and city officials have often clashed with the rest of conservative Louisiana over how to handle violent crime. However, murders and non-fatal shootings have decreased significantly in the past two years, according to the New Orleans Police Department.

There have been hundreds of gun buybacks around the country, but quantitative studies such as a 2021 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research have not indicated that they do much to noticeably reduce violent crime.

Critics say buybacks only collect a fraction of the guns on the streets, fail to reach the people most likely to commit crimes and come with lots of loopholes. During a statewide gun buyback in New York in 2022, a man claimed $21,000 in gift cards by mass-producing 3D printed guns.

Community leaders in New Orleans say the PlayStation swap should be seen not as a one-off, but as part of broader community engagement strategy that also raises awareness and connects families with city-supported gaming programs for their kids.

“To simply take a gun away is not enough,” Carrere said. “I think to replace it with opportunity is really what we’re doing.”

Carrere said he considers the gun buyback initiative successful if it stops even one person from using the gun to commit a crime. He points out it is likely less expensive to hand out PlayStations than imprison someone for armed robbery.

“We all win because we don’t have to deal with another death, we don’t have to deal with another family losing loved ones either by gunshot or by jail,” Carrere said. “And we don’t have to then strain the system.”

Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96

J.D. Carrere, co-director of the NOLA Grown gaming program, right, attends a city-supported gun buyback program Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in New Orleans. Carrere has helped organize a series of gun buybacks after Louisiana loosened gun ownership restrictions. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

New Orleans police officer John Mciver dismantles a firearm handed over as part of a city-supported initiative exchanging guns for PlayStations, Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

New Orleans police officers dismantle firearms handed over in exchange for PlayStations at a city-supported gun buyback Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

Jamile Barnes, 48, left, hands a gun over to a New Orleans police officer as part of a series of city gun buybacks trading PlayStations for firearms Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

Leticia Clanton, 50, turns over her handgun to New Orleans police as she waits to receive a PlayStation in exchange Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

New Orleans police collected more than 30 guns at a gun buyback program exchanging firearms for PlayStations, Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

Pastor Antoine Barriere, left, hands a PlayStation 5 to Leticia Clanton after she handed over her handgun Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

New Orleans police officer John Mciver dismantles a firearm handed over as part of a city-supported initiative exchanging guns for PlayStations, Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street snapped out of its holiday-season funk on Friday.

The S&P 500 rallied 1.3% for its first gain since Christmas and its best day in nearly two months. Strength for Big Tech stocks helped it break a five-day losing streak, its longest since April, and trim its loss for the week to 0.5%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 339 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite leaped 1.8%.

Nvidia was the strongest force lifting the market after dashing 4.5% higher. Other companies caught up in the craze around artificial-intelligence technology also rose, despite criticism that their stock prices have already vaulted too high. Super Micro Computer, which sells servers for AI and other uses, jumped 10.9%, and Palantir Technologies climbed 6.3%.

“While the easy gains in AI may be behind us, we think this rally looks far from over,” according to Solita Marcelli, chief investment officer, Americas, at UBS Global Wealth Management.

Another influential Big Tech stock, Tesla, jumped 8.2% to bounce back from its 6.1% tumble the day before, when it disclosed it delivered fewer electric vehicles in the last three months of 2024 than analysts expected.

Rival Rivian soared 24.5% after saying it delivered more than 14,000 vehicles during the latest quarter. That was more than analysts expected.

On the losing end of Wall Street was U.S. Steel, which fell 6.5% after President Joe Biden blocked a nearly $15 billion deal proposed by Japan’s Nippon Steel to buy its Pittsburgh-based rival.

Beer, wine and liquor companies sank after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned about the direct link between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk. He called for an update on the health warning label on alcoholic drinks, as well as for a reassessment of guidelines for alcohol consumption to account for cancer risk.

Molson Coors Beverage fell 3.4%. Brown-Forman, the distillery behind Jack Daniel’s, lost 2.5%.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 73.92 points to 5,942.47. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 339.86 to 42,732.13, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 340.88 to 19,621.68.

Wall Street’s post-Christmas pullback dimmed its shine by only a bit following two stellar years for U.S. stock indexes. They’ve vaulted to records after the U.S. economy managed to keep growing despite high interest rates that have helped push inflation nearly all the way down to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

But even though the economy and job market still look solid at the moment, the path ahead is not assured. Part of the reason the S&P 500 set more than 50 all-time highs last year was because of the expectation that the Fed would keep cutting interest rates through 2025, after it began easing them in September.

Traders are now ratcheting back their expectations for coming cuts to rates. Inflation is proving to be stubborn as the Fed tries to wring out the last percentage point of improvement to get inflation down to 2%. Worries are also rising that tariffs and other policies coming from President-elect Donald Trump could put upward pressure on inflation. All the while, critics say U.S. stock prices simply look too expensive after rising so much faster than corporate profits.

The threat of Trump’s tariffs has also hurt stock markets overseas. For China, it’s compounded worries about the world’s second-largest economy, which is already contending with a struggling property market and other challenges.

Stocks dropped 1.6% in Shanghai to bring their loss for the week to 5.6%, though they climbed 0.7% in Hong Kong to trim their weekly loss to 1.6%. European stock indexes also fell.

South Korea’s Kospi index jumped 1.8% after the acting president and finance minister, Choi Sang-mok, promised to do more to stabilize the economy. The country is in the midst of a political crisis that has seen two heads of state impeached in under a month.

In the bond market, Treasury yields climbed after a report on U.S. manufacturing came in better than feared.

The report from the Institute for Supply Management showed another month of contraction for manufacturers, the 25th in the last 26. But it wasn’t as severe as economists expected. Manufacturing has been one of the areas of the economy hit hardest by the high interest rates of recent years.

The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.59% from 4.56% late Thursday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, also rose, up to 4.28% from 4.25% late Thursday.

A trader works amid Christmas decorations on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

FILE - The New York Stock Exchange is shown in New York's Financial District on Dec. 31, 2024. American flags flew at half-staff there following the death of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York's Financial District Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

FILE - Currency traders watch monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

FILE - A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Dec. 27, 2024, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)