RAWtools South turns guns into garden tools in the mountain south

But Utz is anything but boring. A natural teacher, he hammered a cooling piece of metal around the tip of an anvil, and explained his process to the crowd. “I’ve got this lengthened out about as much as I want it. I was just stretching it out a little bit using the horn and the peen,” Utz said.

On a nearby table was a display of jewelry and garden tools, all made from parts of discarded guns. Standing behind the table was Stan Wilson, a pastor and the coordinator of RAWtools South, which is based in nearby Asheville.

“We have kind of an unusual niche,” said Wilson. “We take unwanted guns and turn them into garden tools and art.”

In the United States, people have a complicated relationship with guns. For some, they’re associated with family traditions, like hunting. For others, they’re reminders of pain and violence. RAWtools South aims to reduce gun violence by bringing together gun owners, faith communities, and blacksmiths to transform guns into new objects, The Daily Yonder reports.

Wilson joined forces with Utz and his blacksmith skills to start RAWtools South back in January of 2024. It is a spinoff of the original RAWtools, which began in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

“We work with folks who have been affected by gun violence or who have an old shotgun in their house. It doesn’t operate safely anymore, and they don’t need it around,” Wilson said.

RAWtools South gets its guns from safe surrender events where the public can give up their guns to be deconstructed. Wilson partners with churches, community organizations, and local volunteers to facilitate these surrender events.

A Well-Choreographed Event

At a gun surrender in downtown Asheville, Wilson and Utz greeted a group of 40 volunteers in a church parking lot. Wilson stepped into the cluster of volunteers and called out to get people’s attention.

Some folks were holding clipboards and handouts, others were wearing plastic goggles and leather gloves. Utz gave everyone their assignments.

“So our greeters are going to be down at that orange tent down there where we, thank goodness, have some cars lining up right now,” Utz said. “Amen?”

“Amen,” the volunteers responded.

As cars continued lining up in the driveway, Wilson reminded the group of their shared purpose: “Let’s take a few seconds in silence to recognize those who are at the center of our concern, who’ve been affected by gun violence.”

After the moment of silence, the volunteers went to their stations. It was a well-choreographed event. But a noisy one. The low drone of generators accompanied a chorus of buzzing chop saws and grinders.

Several people discussed why they had come to surrender their guns. San, who asked that only her first name be used, was at the head of the line. She explained what drew her there.

“I was in church a couple of weeks ago, and they were giving out flyers for this program,” San said. “So I decided to come up here and bring an old piece of equipment that I inherited. And I really didn’t want it.”

San stayed in her car as volunteers unloaded the gun and took it to the chop saw station. Utz instructed one of the volunteers as they placed the gun on a grinder. “This is the rear end of our receiver,” Utz said. “So we need to cut here through our triggering mechanism.”

“And what do you call out?” prompted Utz. “Cutting!”

“Cutting,” echoed the volunteer as the grinder cut into the metal gun.

Once the gun was cut into three pieces and could no longer be used, the parts were separated into bins.

Wilson reflected on the challenge of bringing people together to transform gun violence in the United States.

“Gun violence is a difficult conversation to have,” Wilson said. “Just having the conversation takes a little bit of courage. To be out here to receive these gun donations. That takes a little bit of courage. And courage is contagious. Let it catch. May it catch.”

A Kind of Alchemy

After each gun surrender, Utz brings the chopped-up gun parts back to his blacksmithing shop in Weaverville, about 10 miles north of Asheville. The shop is a converted garage beneath Utz’s house. There were buckets filled with gun parts on the tables and floor. Utz pointed out the contents of each container.

“Here’s a bucket of springs. These are little pistol barrels that I turn into split crosses,” Utz said.

This is the material he uses to make the jewelry and garden tools that they sell to fund their work.

Utz pointed to more white plastic buckets crowded with long metal cylinders. “These are all barrels from rifles in this bucket. This bucket over here is all shotgun barrels.”

Most of the time Utz works here alone. But sometimes, he and Wilson work together at the forge, along with family members who have been affected by gun violence. And that is how they connected with Teresa Schracta in 2024.

“My son, Lance Corporal Alexander Schrachta, was active duty in the Marine Corps and we lost him to suicide while he was on the barracks,” Schrachta said. Alex was 19. “I was informed that I would receive that firearm. And I was horrified by that thought.”

Schrachta lives in Memphis, Tennessee. She remembered a gun surrender event held there a few months earlier and contacted the organizers. That was how she found Utz and RAWtools South. “I told Scotty my story. He put together this beautiful, I would call it a ceremony,” Schracta said.

Schrachta and her three remaining children drove to Weaverville, North Carolina, and met Utz and Wilson at the shop. Utz had the gun on an anvil.

“I went in very gung-ho on destroying it,” Schrachta said. “So I went in first with the hammer and I was pounding on it. And I loved it, you know, I got out a lot. I was happy to pound on that thing and take everything out on it.”

For Schrachta, it was cathartic to destroy the gun. And while the process began with the gun’s destruction, eventually work became gentler and more creative. “By the end, we were transforming it into jewelry and different pieces of art,” Schracta said. “My daughter came in and had to take over because she had to be soft and delicate with it.”

Schrachta’s two daughters made heart pendants. Her youngest son turned the gun’s slide into a dog tag, stamped with an olive branch. And Schrachta wears a cross made from the barrel of Alex’s gun.

To turn parts of a gun, like a barrel, into something else, you have to heat the metal in the forge until it changes form—until it’s not solid anymore.

“It’s so symbolic,” Schrachta said, “It’s this hard thing that goes in and it comes out soft and you can transform it into something different.

In his shop, Utz reflected on the value of RAWtools South’s work. Not as many guns were surrendered at the church this time compared to last year’s event. But Utz said there are lots of ways to measure progress.

“It’s so much easier to get a gun than to get rid of a gun in our country,” Utz said. “The healing that can happen for folks as they work on transforming these guns into something else, but also transforming their own experiences and trauma into something else [is] healing.”

Surrendering a gun, cutting or smashing it, or heating parts of it up in a forge isn’t going to erase anyone’s experience with gun violence. But it might just change it. It’s a kind of alchemy, to take something hard, used for harm and transform it into something to be worn as a reminder. Or thrust into the earth to plant something green.

This story was produced by The Daily Yonder and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.