Pawn shops.

Yes, those places where jewelry and other items of value - including guns - are exchanged for cash and then resold.

The idea started with complaints that state gun laws were hard to understand. So Snyder, the Police Department's Project Safe Neighborhoods coordinator, and the group North Carolinians Against Gun Violence turned legalese into everyday language

They printed the information on cards and recently distributed them to pawn shops. And paramedics. And Duke University cops. And anyone else who wanted them.

On her visits to the pawn shops, some shopkeepers told Snyder they needed more gun locks, a safety mechanism to keep a gun from being fired accidentally. So she returned last week with gun locks aplenty. The gun locks are given to law enforcement agencies for free by Project Child Safe, a gun safety organization. The police then give them away. Each of the four pawn shops Snyder visited received a box of 20 gun locks.

Pawn shops are required by law to give gun locks to people buying firearms. They cost up to $3 a piece, so Snyder's giveaways save the pawn shops money, said Bob Moulton, president of National Pawn.

"It's just being a good business citizen," he said.

Pawn shops also keep illegal guns off the streets, said Bill Dawson, general manager of Carolina Jewelry & Pawn. Some people who trade in guns for a cash loan don't get them back when a computer check finds the gun is stolen or the owner is a felon.

"We have a responsibility to promote gun safety," he said. "Why wouldn't it be important?"

For Snyder, the pawn shop efforts, as well as the cards and the locks, represent the kind of collaboration needed to reduce gun violence.

"It's important to stop all the gaps," she said. "We have just about everything we need in terms of organizational and internal partnerships. What we really need is for the community to express their outrage and to understand that if they're living in a situation that makes them feel unsafe, they do have a lot more power than they're currently utilizing."

Past Project Safe Neighborhoods programs have included gang awareness workshops for parents.

Next Snyder wants to saturate Durham with information about how residents can take back their neighborhoods from gun violence, including combating the culture against "snitching," or sharing information with police.

"As long as [citizens] don't snitch, they're playing into the bad guys' hands," she said. "We have to make community members aware that they have a lot of power they're not using right now."