Boulder Mennonites turn donated guns into garden tools
By KATIE LANGFORDApril 10, 2021 GMT
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — There was healing in the swing of a hammer at Boulder Mennonite Church on Good Friday.
Dozens of community members gathered for a vigil to pray, reflect and remember 10 victims of a mass shooting at the nearby King Soopers on March 22.
The event was accompanied by the steady clang of a hammer as people took turns forming disassembled guns into garden tools a quarter of a mile away from where the shooting occurred. Boulder Mennonite Church is just across Broadway.
Colorado Springs-based RAWtools travels the state and country offering demonstrations, nonviolence training and action steps related to gun violence. These demonstrations are a central part of what they do — taking donated guns, disassembling them, heating the metal in a forge and turning them into tools, a literal application of a verse from the book of Isaiah in the Bible: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”