Fill A Hole

 There is an organization, based out of Colorado Springs and Philadelphia, called RAWTools. They are in the business of beating swords into plowshares. Or, more accurately, turning guns into garden tools. They take donated guns, melt them down, and pound them into shapes better used to cultivate than mutilate. They wrote a book, too. It's called Beating Guns. I was sent a copy with a nice note from one of the authors and founders of this movement. 

I read this book. More to the point, I contemplated this book. There are not a lot of thoughts between the covers that have not occurred to me over the course of the years I have been writing in this corner of Al Gore's Internet about America's gun problem. First of all, the problem is not a matter of supply. Back in 2018, there were nearly four hundred billion guns in the United States. There are not four hundred million people living in the United States. I don't own a gun. I don't know very many people who own guns. That means that there are a lot of people in our country who own more than one gun. Millions of new guns are made every year here in the land of the fearful and home of the factory that makes them. 

Which seems to suggest that people are snapping up those guns because America is such a rough town. Things are getting more dangerous all the time. Not exactly. Since 2010, violent crime rates have done a rollercoaster decline. And somehow, gun deaths over that same period have increased. Steadily. Maybe that's because there are so many "good guys with guns" out there taking care of business. 

Or maybe more guns just means more death. Good, bad, young, old. Guns don't discriminate. Guns don't kill. Try telling that to any of the parents of the children who were killed at Sandy Hook. Or Uvalde. Or I could go on and on. These machines were made for killing, or to quote the poet, "Ain't good for nothin But put a man six feet in a hole." 

Which brings me back to Shane and Michael, the minds behind RAWTools. Instead of an semiautomatic weapon that could be used for murder, how about we melt that bad boy down and turn it into a spade. For turning earth. For planting trees. For creating life instead of taking it away. Donate your guns today. If you own one. Better yet, if you don't own a gun.

Don't buy one.