Guns to Gardens Safe Surrender
I am a member of RAWtools, which has 'shops' in Asheville, NC, Philadelphia, PA, Buffalo, NY, and its main shop in Colorado Springs, CO. RAWtools is a cooperative movement aimed at turning "swords into plowshares" or "guns to gardens". We lose more than 100 people a day to gun violence in the United States, it’s becoming more and more clear that guns have no place in conflict resolution. My project is to start a mini-coop of RAWtools in Marin/San Francisco Counties of California, whereby people would donate their unwanted guns and receive a garden tool, perhaps made from other disabled guns. This program would, with the cooperation of local police, accept weapons with no questions and disable these surrendered weapons according to ATF guidelines. The project would also include the forging of disabled weapons, turning them into small shovels, hand rakes, etc. This would., in part, be done at public non-religious events where people, preferably those who have been affected by gun violence, could hammer these disabled weapons, slowly turning them into gardening tools. These events could be in a local community center, church parking lot, school parking lot, etc. Hopefully, I could get a volunteer to handle, or at least, help with the logistics. If even one gun is taken off the streets, this would make the community more "awesome".