Venezuela asks citizens to swap guns for grants, meds

Seeking to slash the world's second-highest murder rate, Venezuela launched a gun swap program Monday asking citizens to exchange firearms for scholarships, medicine, free surgery or construction materials.

The South American country's 30 million people own 15 million guns, both legal and illegal, according to a government estimate.

That has fueled violent crime and an annual homicide rate that has reached 53 per 100,000 inhabitants, the second-highest in the world after Honduras, according to the United Nations.

Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres said the exchange program would last one year and was aimed at taking "a whole lot of weapons" out of civilian hands.

"Every gun that is removed from circulation means the likelihood of less violence, death, crime," he told journalists.

Authorities have set up 60 swaps across the country, four of them in the capital, Caracas.

Participants can hand in their guns anonymously.

President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government has set aside 300 million bolivars ($47.6 million, at the official exchange rate) to fund the incentive program.

The abundance of guns in Venezuela has amplified a wave of violent crime in recent years. Opposition leaders accuse late president Hugo Chavez's party of handing out guns to supporters after a failed coup against the leftist firebrand -- Maduro's predecessor and mentor -- in 2002.