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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/nationwide-movement-turning-guns-into-garden-tools/>
"The first time Mike Martin held an AK-47 was after the 2012 shooting at Sandy
Hook Elementary in Connecticut, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six
adults. The shooting shocked a friend of a friend, a lawyer, into questioning
why he owned an AK-47 in the first place. “He decided to destroy that one,”
Martin recalls.
As a Mennonite youth and young adult pastor, Martin had long contemplated the
idea of interpreting the “swords to ploughshares” ideal from the
Book of
Isaiah in a modern context.
“My faith tradition is rooted in peace and non-violence,” he says. Together
with his father and the lawyer, Martin took the AK-47 to a nearby blacksmith in
Colorado Springs, dismantled it and forged the metal into a shovel and a rake.
“There’s this thing about turning guns into garden tools,” Martin reflects in
the book
Beating Guns. “You have to add some heat — a little more than 2,000
degrees of controlled flame.”
This moment sparked the beginning of RAWtools (War spelled backwards), a
nonprofit Martin now runs full-time, and a movement spanning four states with
affiliates in Buffalo, NY; Philadelphia, PA; and Asheville, North Carolina.
Since its humble beginnings 14 years ago, RAWtools has destroyed and repurposed
more than 6,000 guns, forging them into garden tools and art. Martin now
carries the trigger of the first Kalashnikovs he destroyed on a keyring, while
books about gun violence and art collages made from weapon parts line his
walls.
For Martin, the physical act of destroying a gun can be healing, but often it’s
just the beginning of a bigger conversation. “The dominant culture often tells
us that we can’t escape the violence, so we should therefore join the
violence,” he says. “Instead, this counter-story of turning swords into plows
insists that violence is the problem, not the solution.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
