UMass Dartmouth Demonstrates How Guns Can Be Turned Into Garden Tools, Jewelry

On Thursday, March 27, students at UMass Dartmouth tried their hand at fashioning glowing slabs of metal into garden tools and jewelry. The blacksmithing event transformed metal from locally sourced guns into something beautiful and useful.

Blacksmiths from Swords to Plowshares took students through the steps of making a small shovel from a gun barrel and heart-shaped necklaces from a former handgun or BB gun. The organization also creates three-pronged garden hoes using metal from firearms.

All of the gardening tools Swords to Plowshares crafts are provided to community gardens, universities, churches, and schools across New England.

Last November, the New Bedford and Fall River police departments held a “guns for groceries” event. Area residents could turn in guns with no questions asked in exchange for Market Basket gift cards and Domino's Pizza coupons. 

According to a Dartmouth Week report, 229 guns were handed in during the event. While the guns collected in Fall River were destroyed, the ones surrendered in New Bedford were transferred to the New Bedford police station, where the long guns and handguns were cut apart.

Matthew Roy, assistant vice chancellor for civic engagement at UMass Dartmouth and Right Reverend James Curry, a retired Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut and a founding member of Bishops United Against Gun Violence, collected the metal to donate to the UMass blacksmithing workshop.

“We're not trying to take anyone's weapon or mess with anyone's Second Amendment rights if they want the weapon,” Roy said. “We're just trying to make the community safer.”

Roy described the symbolism of hammering objects that are dangerous and transforming them into something “either beautiful in the case of the jewelry, or productive in the case of the gardening tools.”

“We can shape garden tools from an instrument of potential great harm to an instrument of great nurture,” Curry added.