After week of violence, Oakland event forges guns into garden tools

Last week, a 15-year-old boy was shot at Skyline High School. The next day, Laney College athletic director and longtime Oakland football coach John Beam was killed in a targeted attack on campus.

When Cynthia Davis, an 84-year-old Berkeley resident, heard this news, she decided it was time to turn in her late husband’s gun, fearing that if someone broke into her house, they might steal it and use it to hurt someone.

“I was just devastated about what happened to the coach because I had met him before,” she said. “It’s just that we have too many guns in Oakland.”

Davis is one of the dozens of people who surrendered their firearms at a gun buyback event held Saturday at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church by Oakland police in partnership with Guns to Gardens, a faith-based group that forges firearms into gardening tools. In return, participants received a Target gift card worth up to $300 and garden tools made from previously surrendered weapons.

Fifty-seven guns and one switchblade were collected, and about $4,500 in cards were distributed, said Paula Hawthorn, who helped organize the event. Since 2022, 300 firearms have been recovered across four Guns to Gardens events.

Studies have found that voluntary gun buyback programs in the United States are not particularly effective at reducing gun violence. And ghost guns that are ordered and assembled through kits are increasingly being used in crimes, including in the Skyline shooting.

But the primary goal of the event, Hawthorn said, is to collect loose weapons kept inside homes that may pose a hidden threat. 

“The very presence of a gun in a home makes it very likely that something bad is going to happen,” she said.

Gabriel Urquiza, commander of OPD’s Ceasefire violence prevention program, highlighted that some of the collected items were assault weapons. 

“If we’re taking one firearm that may be used against the community off the street, that’s worth our time and investment in this project,” Urquiza said.

A mental health worker from Concord who turned in guns confiscated from a mentally ill family member said fewer guns means fewer suicides. 

She looked forward to using the miniature shovel she received in her vegetable garden.

John Rogers, who forges the firearms into farm tools, has lost friends to gun violence. Three years ago, he said, a woman he knew was shot by her son, who then turned the gun on himself. Ten days earlier, Rogers had sushi with both of them.

“That incident made it more personal, looking back,” he said. “If we saved one life doing this, that’s worth it for me.”

Inspired by a Bible verse about forging swords into plowshares, Rogers molds the tool with an imprint of the kind of weapon it was forged from. Some of the tool handles were made to look like a short gun barrel, while others had grips reminiscent of triggers. Each takes about 20 minutes to mold into shape after shredding the weapons, he said.

For Jason Jones, of Alameda, who returned two rifles his dad gave him, keeping guns away from children was his top priority.

“I have a kid at home. He’s got friends,” he said. “We are better off not having guns.”

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said in a news conference at the event that she was particularly alarmed to learn that “a weapon of war,” an AK-47, was among the guns returned.

“The community has to come together and also support each other to make sure that our public safety is what it should be here in Oakland, and that criminals are held accountable,” she said.

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