MADISON, Wis. — The lead harvest got underway at First United Methodist Church in Madison on Saturday during its “Guns to Gardens” event
What You Need To Know
Visitors walked or drove in to surrender unwanted weapons that will be transformed into gardening tools
Jeff Wild is a blacksmith and a retired Lutheran pastor. He said he’s presided over a dozen funerals for firearm-related deaths. That’s what inspired him to begin this work
Sherry Caves volunteered to help run Guns to Gardens on Saturday. She even brought some of her own guns for recycling
Caves said her husband used to hunt, but he hasn’t touched the guns in years
Visitors walked or drove in to surrender unwanted weapons that will be transformed into gardening tools.
“Particularly hand spade for gardeners, and then also a tool called a mattock,” said organizer Jeff Wild.
Wild is a blacksmith and a retired Lutheran pastor. He said he’s presided over a dozen funerals for firearm-related deaths.
He said that’s what inspired him to begin this work.
“Our society is impacted and maybe even in ways we don’t fully grasp,” Wild said.
Sherry Caves volunteered to help run Guns to Gardens on Saturday. She even brought some of her own guns for recycling.
Caves said her husband used to hunt, but he hasn’t touched the guns in years.
“I’m afraid someone might steal them, and I don’t know what to do with them,” she said.
Caves said she’s had several close calls with guns in the past that she won’t forget. One that has really stuck with her was when she was driving with her young daughter, and got into a crash with a robbery suspect who was trying to get away.
“He ran around the back of our car, and we were sitting there in this accident with this person, with this gun,” Caves recalled. “I couldn’t do anything with my daughter because she was [strapped in]. It was awful. It was just awful.”
Caves said experiences like that led her to volunteer on Saturday and get involved with anti-violence organizations in Wisconsin.
“I think it would be hard to find a family that doesn’t have some experience, either firsthand or second, with a gun problem,” she said.
Wild said he believes transforming these firearms symbolizes a larger transformation that can happen in society.
“I see transformation happen with a firearm and think about how transformation can change our minds and hearts from inclinations towards violence, to inclinations towards peacemaking in the world,” he said.