Gun Violence Awareness Event Set For Sept. 11

Press release from S2P:

Sept. 6, 2022

Boulder Knoll Community Farm will be the site of a hands-on demonstration by Swords to Plowshares Northeast (https://www.s2pnortheast.org/) on how to transform surrendered guns into garden tools. The event, co-sponsored by St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, First Congregational Church of Cheshire and Friends of Boulder Knoll, will take place at the farm (875 Boulder Knoll Road, Cheshire) at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 11.

Swords to Plowshares, co-founded by the Right Reverend James E. Curry, retired Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Church of Connecticut, aims to build coalitions of community groups to help reduce gun violence. “With 40,000 gun deaths per year in our country, something must be done now,” the group’s website states. “The strategy we apply to this problem is to convert weapons of death into tools of life, and then use those tools to the betterment of the community.”

One of the ways it does this is through living out the Biblical call to turn “swords into plowshares.” And, at the Sept. 11 event, Rev. Curry will serve as the blacksmith, using a forge and anvil to demonstrate how to transform the parts of guns into gardening tools. Rev. Curry says his forge is “just one strategy, one prong in a multipronged approach to changing the attitude toward gun violence in our community.”

In addition to the demonstration, there will be hands-on participation. This not only raises awareness of gun violence, it offers the public an opportunity to “do something” about it.

Other community organizations who will have representatives on site at the Sept. 11 event are Connecticut Against Gun Violence and the Cheshire Police Department.

The event is free. All members of the community are welcome.

This press release was produced by S2P. The views expressed here are the author's own.