Great Barrington — According to the Gun Violence Archive website, as of Tuesday, November 15, there have been 38,629 deaths due to gun violence this year. That number includes 17,641 homicides, 20,988 suicides, 599 deaths due to mass shootings, and 32 deaths due to mass murders.
In January 2017, the Connecticut-based Swords to Plowshares organization was formed to reduce gun violence. According to its website, the organization’s mission is to work with local community groups, including police departments, businesses, and religious organizations in managing gun buybacks and repurposing weapons. The organization held its repurposing event at The Guthrie Center on Saturday, Nov. 12.
At the event, a Pro-Forge blacksmith forge was set up on the front lawn of The Guthrie Center in order to melt down metal from guns. Residents stood in line to take their turn to hammer the metal on an anvil set up near the forge. The metal is used to create gardening tools for local farming organizations, along with heart-shaped pendants.
The event was held in partnership with Great Barrington’s Grace Church, along with several other community organizations, including the town’s Police Department which gave away gun locks at the event.
Church Rector Rev. Cristina Rathbone said that the church invited Swords to Plowshares to Great Barrington after church representatives attended an event in Springfield. “I think the organization is important because this is a symbolic act of taking weapons that can be used for violence and turning it into a tool that can be used to feed people,” Rev. Rathbone said. “And because this is a participatory event, everybody gets a chance to actually hammer away on a piece of metal, transforming it from something that we are awash in this country into something that we actually need.”
“All of the guns that we get are turned in voluntarily through police buybacks,” organization blacksmith John Cerritelli said. “We’re not looking to take people’s guns away because there are many responsible gun owners.”
Organization co-founder Jim Curry said that “I think we have to rethink the place of guns in our lives.” He explained, “We often get knocked each other’s heads apart with a political debate when it comes to guns. What we are showing is a theological answer that we can beat our swords into plowshares; we can make our guns into garden tools. It’s a voluntary way to be part of that promise that we will not have war or violence anymore.”
After he finished hammering away at the anvil, Sheffield resident Jonathan Miller happily sang a few verses of “If I Had a Hammer.” “This is a way to symbolically show that there is a need in this country to control guns,” Miller said. “This need is more important than ever because you keep looking at the news that gun violence is always there.”
Several speakers at the event talked about how gun violence impacted their lives and the lives of the people they care about. Chelsea Day spoke about her best friend, Vanessa, with whom she became best friends while going to elementary school in Egremont. “Just over a year ago, my best friend of 38 years was murdered by her husband in their home while their two children were in their house,” Day said. “Vanessa’s children are the most powerful human beings I have ever known. They wake up every day, go to football practice, and homecoming dances, and celebrate all of these things without either of their parents. Today, we take these weapons that can be used for violence and put them into the forge in order to melt them down and then transform them into a new existence. Here is my ask: While you hammer away, tap into the powerful journey of Vanessa’s loved ones, and the odyssey of anyone’s ridiculously impossible human pain that echoes for generations.”
Day said that the trauma that is felt by Vanessa’s children “is just a single drop into an energetic pool of suffering on this planet. Their lives will be determined by our ability to transform pain into sharing the spirit of our loved ones so their lives live on. Although our loved ones were taken from us, they are with us always. So as you forge today, please consider what it would look like if we started embodying the spirit of the ones we’ve lost. Keep them alive through our work today and every day.”
For more information about Swords to Plowshares, go to its website.
