Guns are tools, right? Police and soldiers use them to do their jobs, and many citizens feel safer with one strapped on. In the United States, the only country with more guns than people, it’s no surprise that these weapons feature daily in the news: from terror attacks and mass shootings to the less publicized but more widespread epidemics of handgun violence, suicide, and accidental shootings by children.

Turn War Around

The Second Amendment enshrines a distinctly American – and, some would say, sacred – freedom: the right to bear arms. How to reconcile that with the need to curb gun violence? Michael Martin, a young Mennonite from Colorado Springs, decided the best way to approach this emotionally charged issue was to tell a different story – to counter the debilitating stream of tragic news with an alternative narrative of transformation and restoration, one tool at a time.

Martin won’t take away your rights, but if you happen to have a gun you want to be rid of, he’ll be happy to forge it into a garden tool for you.