A New York Times editorial presents the idea of buying back guns, melting them down, and reforging them into garden tools.
The idea did was not born at the NYT, rather it is the result of various gun control groups working to reduce the number of guns in circulation in America.
For example, NYT reports Connecticut’s New Haven Police Department did a buyback “in cooperation with RAWtools Inc., a gun safety program that specializes in breaking apart firearms and reforging gun barrels into safer things.” This opens the door for “prison inmate volunteers” to “transform surrendered weapons into gardening tools to be provided to schools so students can plant and harvest vegetables for soup kitchens.”
Even a cursory glance at RAWTools website shows that the company believes Christians are commanded to be sitting ducks. They literally praise the idea of being a “soft target.” A post called, “Blessed are the Soft Targets,” rejects efforts to arm ushers and congregants to protect the weak and frail from attack. The post says, “From a Jesus lens, this doesn’t work.” It then goes on to say, “Faith communities, especially ones that follow Jesus, have a powerful opportunity to show an alternative to gun violence. We should be proud of gun free zones. So be it if you call me a soft target. This is what Jesus calls us to be.”
Sandy Hook was a gun free zone, should we be proud of that?
The Aurora movie theater (July 20, 2012), San Bernardino county building (December 2, 2015), and Orlando Pulse nightclub (June 12, 2016), were all gun-free zones, should be proud of that?
The suggestion that we should, and that we ought to pursue the status of “soft target,” is ludicrous. Yet this is the view that RAWTools promotes and this view, in partnership with buybacks, is being promulgated by the NYT editorial.
The NYT editorial closes with a quote from Steven Yanovsky, of the gun control group Newtown Foundation, “You’re taking a weapon of death and turning it into the complete opposite, which is life. So you go from a rifle or a handgun to carrots.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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