Michael Martin, a Mennonite from Colorado, turns guns into tools you can garden with. (“Gardening with Guns,” Plough, Autumn 2016.)

Martin and his wife, Hannah, decided to change guns from weapons of destruction to tools for growing food. Their first weapon was an AK-47 assault rifle. They turned it into hand cultivators.

One mother, who had lost her son to gun violence, pounded a handgun removed from Philadelphia streets into a hoe and tilling fork. It was used to plant flowers for gun violence victims.

Another mother, whose son shot several young schoolgirls before committing suicide, took a hammer to the barrel of a gun in a demonstration for Martin’s organization. The mother visits regularly with one of the survivors of the shooting, who is wheelchair bound from the incident.

A military veteran, saved from suicide by a passing stranger, turned his Smith & Wesson .22 into a tool he used for planting a garden.

Anther man, whose father committed suicide with a gun, donated it to the group.

Martin’s group, RAW (WAR turned around) does not take away gun rights. They simply transform guns into instruments for healing and growth.