Photos by Libby O’Neill / The Town Common
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Newburyport hosted Swords to Ploughshares Northeast Sunday at the church.
Swords to Ploughshares brought a forge to St. Paul’s to repurpose guns that have been surrendered through buy-back programs. The guns were melted and made into garden tools.
The Swords to Plowshares reduces the number of guns on our streets and repurposes them for positive community action.
The guns are repurposed into gardening tools either by prisoners in participating prisons, crew members from reentry programs or by volunteer blacksmiths.
The finished tools are donated to community gardens, agricultural high schools or used as donation incentives.
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- Jim Curry delicately places metal rings that have been cut from the barrel of a shotgun into the forge, a furnace that heats metal into a malleable material.
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- Jim Curry carries a scorching hot piece of scrap metal, once belonging to a gun, to the anvil where it is ready to be blacksmithed.
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- John Hayden (left), founder of Guns 2 Gardens, proudly shares with local farmer and business owner of High Road Farm in Newbury, Mac Scanlon the unique artwork made by students involved in the organization.
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- John Hayden (left), founder of Guns 2 Gardens, proudly shares with local farmer and business owner of High Road Farm in Newbury, Mac Scanlon the unique artwork made by students involved in the organization.
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- John Friedrich holds Samantha Benson, his three-year-old great granddaughter, at a safe distance to watch her great grandmother, Roberta Benson, hammer a metal ring into a heart.
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- Meena Tejwani (left), member of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Beverly Massachusetts, participates in the Swords to Plowshares Northeast demonstration led by former Bishop Jim Curry.
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- Metal rings that have been cut from a shotgun barrel are placed delicately in the forge, a furnace that heats the metal allowing it to become malleable.
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- Liz Green, Executive Director of a non-profit organization and community farm in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Three Sisters, holds a garden tool crafted by unwanted firearms that have been repurposed by organization Swords To Plowshares Northeast.
