Fall G2G Action Circles
Our fall Guns 2 Gardens Action Circles have completed their training. On Sat. Oct. 16 two Action Circle churches held their first G2G events, Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, GA and a different type of safe surrender event in Cleveland, OH. We are so proud of them!
See below for an interview with the leaders, Mary Smarr from GA (photo, far right) and Bob Ault from OH.
PPF: Tell us about Oakhurst Presbyterian Church. Has it been directly impacted by gun violence?
Mary Smarr: We are about 300 members in a neighborhood that has gone through a lot of change over the years. It’s now a very expensive community, a suburb of Atlanta. We have not had a lot of gun violence and most of our members probably do not have guns. However, someone in our church had a family member die from suicide with a gun and our Associate Pastor has very young children in a school where another young child brought a gun to school. We are also the community that was in the news when the school Administrative Assistant talked a gunman out of committing a shooting at the school.
PPF: How was the Oct. 16 G2G event in Decatur?
Mary: We had some excitement about doing a G2G event and some hesitancy. There were 3 churches doing it together: Oakhurst Presbyterian, Oakhurst Baptist and North Decatur Presbyterian. There were some fears ---I think unrealistic fears --- about having guns in a public place. Because of the hesitancy, we didn’t do the publicity that we really needed to do. The good info that we got from the Peace Fellowship came too late in the process and one of the churches had a church trip that day to Washington DC for the
Soul Box Project, also about gun violence. We were all set up and ready, but no one came with a gun to disarm. It was disappointing. I found comfort from Mike Martin at
RAWtools saying that it took 1 ½ years of events before anyone surrendered a gun to them.
PPF: What was your set up and your plan?
Mary: We had a team of 4 or 5 of us. The team included our Associate Pastor, who was ready to operate the chop saw, plus a member who was going to take photos and have conversations with those who brought guns, plus a member of my family who agreed to handle the guns and check that they were unloaded. We have been worshipping outside in our parking lot, so there was already a platform. We put the chop saw on the platform and we were ready for cars to drive by to have guns disarmed. We had a sign, but it was not at the front of the church. We had planned to mail the gun pieces to RAWtools to be forged into garden tools, so we had a good plan and a good set up. We waited from 10am-12pm. It was good just to sit and talk. We are meeting soon to look at a date for another Guns 2 Gardens event.
PPF: What will you do differently next time?
Mary: We need to do better education with the congregation on why people would want to surrender guns --- guns that people don’t want in their homes, guns that could be used in a suicide or an accident. If we did more education, I think there would not be the hesitancy. And we need to do more publicity. You have to get the word out.
PPF: The Oct. 16 event in Cleveland, Ohio was not a Guns 2 Gardens event, but similar. They raised money for gift cards to thank gun donors. Instead of using a chop saw, the guns were taken out of vehicles by the local police and will be melted down in the town’s historic steel mill. Bob, what was it like on Oct. 16?
Bob Ault: It was good. We didn’t know what to expect. The session wanted us to have police there because the church, Covenant Presbyterian, is on the campus of Case-Western University. We did it in the church parking lot, a very visible location. It was advertised as “Bring Your Guns Anonymously 1-4 pm,” so we didn’t have conversations or ask anyone their name. They drove by and stayed in their cars. The police took the guns out and checked that they were unloaded and put them in a police van. They didn’t interact with the drivers, nor did they wear uniforms. They wore red sweat shirts. It took about three minutes, since we weren’t actually cutting the guns up. I gave out the gift cards. We received 17 guns, including 7 long guns and 6 semi-automatic handguns. We had enough gift cards left over that we can hold another event, maybe in a different location next time.
PPF: How did you publicize the event?
Bob: We had a flier and we posted it and I took it to about eight or nine pastors and asked them to announce it. It was a joint project with Presbytery of Western Reserve, Lakewood Presbyterian Church, our church and the group God Before Guns. They sent out a press release to about 25 radio, TV and others. Channel 19 announced it in advance and then they came to the event and broadcast it on the 7 and 9 pm news. Also, I did ask some donors how they heard about the event. They GOOGLED it! People were looking for a place to surrender guns they didn’t want. They found us.
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