Peace Talks Radio
Repurposing Guns: A Step Towards Peace
HOST: Today on Peace Talks Radio, turning tools of violence into talismans of change to have a garden tool made out of grandpa's gun. Now you have a new heirloom to pass down and it's something that will live on and be a part of that family's legacy. We hear from two innovators helping communities reimagine that deadly weapons in their midst.
(Peter Brune clip)
“We are free to the extent where I don't have to defend myself. That's true freedom, and that's a society we should strive for”.
HOST: Repurposing guns Today on Peace Talks Radio.
This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm Jessica Ticktin in for series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Andrew Stelzer. Getting rid of a gun can make a community safer. Bringing a community together to heal from violence can be even more powerful when practice of peacemaking is finding creative ways to work through that pain and come out on the other side.
In other words, to heal. For this episode of Peace Talks Radio, we hear from people spearheading projects that not only get rid of firearms, they turn them into something beautiful and bring people together in the process. In part two of this episode, we'll meet Peter Brune, a Swedish activist who founded humanium. A project that melts down illegal guns from conflict zones, makes jewelry, pens, and other objects out of the metal and donates the proceeds to organizations working for peace in those same parts of the world.
But first, in Part one, we'll hear about raw tools. An organization founded in 2013 and Colorado using basic blacksmithing skills, they turn firearms into garden tools.
Those tools often are made and taken back home by the same people, then brought them in to be destroyed. Raw Tools has opened up branches in Philadelphia and North Carolina and does workshops across the country. They also conduct training in non-violence and connect people to resources like victim support groups, community gardening and yoga.
Here's Andrew Stelzer interviewing Pastor Mike Martin, the co-founder of Raw Tools.
Andrew Stelzer: Mike Martin grew up in the Mennonite Church, which is known for its pacifism. His father had a shotgun, but rarely used it still. Martin was no stranger to firearms. It's a weird Venn diagram where gun ownership and Christianity overlap a lot.
So Christians are one of the larger demographics of gun owners in this country. That overlap is now the intersection where Martin works and lives. Although many of raw tool's, guns to garden tools, events, draw all sorts of people. His faith is what drives him, and he still attends the church he grew up in.
That was his community. Back in April of 1999, when a school shooting in nearby Columbine, Colorado shocked the world. The Columbine shooting happened when I was in high school, just about an hour north of me, but it still felt at that time as something that was an anomaly that it would never happen again.
Mike Martin: I was youth pastor at a Mennonite church. There was a lot of hunting culture or folks who did hunt in my church, but there was no like braggadocious way that people would talk about their guns. They, it was something that was to be kept away and safe and not something that you'd boast about really, it.
That would've been out of the norm for my faith community at that time. It still is. I went target shooting sometimes. I played paintball a lot in high school, which the popular place to go was just outside of Colorado Springs called Dragon Man's. I. And he's had a few interviews and things like that.
He's often talked about as the most armed man in America. So our capture the flag paintball courses were next door to a shooting range. So we'd be playing capture the flag while sometimes also hearing some guns go off or things like that. We'd walk into his store and if he needed to rent any equipment or paintball guns or pay 'em, you'd also see all these guns around 'cause it was kind of like all one space.
Andrew Stelzer: And then all that changed. Your perspective changed after Sandy Hook.
Mike Martin: Yeah, that was, my wife was a elementary school teacher at that time. And the same number of kids that died in that shooting were the same number that she had in her class that day, which that number changed all the time. And for some reason that stuck with us.
It made it closer for us and a lot of the people that we had kind of floated and talked about the idea of raw tools to, so while maybe now we look back and see that not enough was done after Sandy Hook to kind of curtail that type of violence, there were a lot of groups that started off of that advocacy groups, legislative action groups. And then us as well a couple months after the shooting.
Andrew Stelzer: So I know it's changed since 2013, but in general, if I have a gun, how do I approach raw tools or if I have multiple guns, how does this all work?
Mike Martin: Usually folks with firearms who are approaching us are wanting a safe way to dispose of them.The way we do it is destroy it in front of them, and that offers a lot of peace and solace. A lot of my other training is in restorative justice and transformative practices, and a lot of that is centered around survivor's experience with gun violence. So it's not uncommon for us to get firearms that have been returned to families after a completed suicide. And so it's not just an inanimate object, it's an object that harmed someone very close to them. And so they don't really want it laying around in their house. Um, when we started, we had a lot of people turn in firearms they'd been hanging onto for a long time, even just hunting rifles, something that had caused harm or was used as threat of harm to them.
And we were a safe place for that to be disposed of. You can fill out a form online, on our website to turn in a firearm, and from there we can connect you to a volunteer to cut it up. But if it's in person with us in our city, they meet us at our shop. Or might we might meet at like a more public space, like a church parking lot or community organizations parking lot and set up our saws and cut it up.
And that takes anywhere from five to 15 minutes. And sometimes, you know, that's enough for the person giving up the gun. They're just happy to not have it in their home anymore. And then for others, they want to look into something else. They might want something made out of the firearm that reminds them of a loved one, or gives them, you know, a physical object, a symbol to see that.
They decided I'm not gonna use this kind of lethal means anymore as I navigate life and others. You know, they might even take part in helping us make a garden tool or a piece of jewelry out of the firearm that they turned in, which then might also then to regular lead to them regularly volunteering in our blacksmith shop.
Working with other volunteers, transforming other people's donated firearms into things. Or they might volunteer at events that help foster safe spaces for others to turn in their firearms. So it can build on itself in that way too.
Andrew Stelzer: And you make all sorts of items. The tools are what's, uh, most prominently known, especially because of the name of your organization.But jewelry. Are there other things that uh, you make?
Mike Martin: Yeah, we, the garden tools are kind of our main. Bread and butter piece, we make a amatic, M-A-T-T-O-C-K, which is essentially a general tool, multipurpose tool. It has a fork on one side and a hoe on the other side, which connects to the idea of turning swords into plowshares.
And then we also make a little hand shovel out of a shotgun, different types of firearms. Give us. Different types of metal. So there's a, a kind of a zone of different types of tools that we can make. And then there's a lot of little pieces that can't really be made into tools without a whole lot of extra work that doesn't make sense as far as time efficiency.
So we make that into jewelry. Other crafts, we invite kids that are interacting with this too. If you're taller than wherever the anvil is set up, then you can, we invite you to swing a hammer and have fun with that. Little kids. Bring little hammers and. And hammer on the gun barrel. But if that's not appropriate or they feel uncomfortable, 'cause that metal's pretty hot, we have kind of this craft station set up, so little pieces of wood and plastic that are cut into random shapes or sometimes in the shapes of letters so they can spell different words like faith, hope, love, peace, justice, things like that.
It's a variety of different arts and crafts, jewelry, things like that, that remind us to cultivate healthy worlds, healthy communities in places where. We're gonna have conflict, but it doesn't have to be lethal like it's been.
Andrew Stelzer: We are speaking with Mike Martin, the co-founder of Raw Tools. I think the phrase swords into plowshares is something a lot of people have heard but may not know the origin story or how you are taking it pretty much literally. Can you unpack the meaning of those words?
Mike Martin: Yeah, so as a Mennonite coming from the Christian faith tradition, there's a couple scriptures that talk about turning swords into plowshares and training for war. No more. And one of those also goes on to say, sitting under your own vine and fig tree in fear of no other.
That line was kind of made even more popular through the Hamilton play. Uh, George Washington talks about that, and we're certainly not the first organization to turn. Weapons of war or artists turn weapons of war and guns into art or musical instruments or so, or something else, garden tools. But the idea of making that more accessible to the everyday person who might have a sword or a gun.
We do get knives given to us as well, but to have that modern day sword, sword and plowshare in some of those ancient languages would've had either a homophonic. Sound so they would, might sound similar or share a similar word, root word. So in our English, we kinda lose the poetic piece of that. It did share like a root of iron.
They're both made of iron and steel. But there was also, in the language, there was a a poetic piece to this. And so we bring that forward. We like to say that semi-automatic tomatic, but then also in our work with survivors who enter into that process as well. It's a somatic. Embodied experience, so to say that semi-automatic thematic is somatic, we really want to just lean into that piece to say that.
When we give up these lethal means like firearms, we are asking our bodies to imagine a different way to navigate the world than having a gun on our hip. And part of that is releasing the trauma that some of us may carry rec connected to gun violence, kind of through our arms into the hammer and into that gun barrel that might have brought harm to folks.
While also simultaneously transforming it into something that's gonna bring life to our community. And that's the somatic part, that we hold these things, these memories, good and bad in our bodies. And if we can have healthy spaces to process those painful ones, then we're better for it and our communities better for it.
Andrew Stelzer: And what are the different ways you involve survivors of gun violence in the work? Both tangibly with the weapons, but I guess larger in, uh, in sometimes in larger ways, organizationally or at your events or related events.
Mike Martin: Yeah. I mean, as we started, we were kind of an event based organization, and along with this kind of hourlong or a little over an hour demonstration of turning a piece of a gun into a garden tool, we would invite folks who've been impacted by gun violence to share their story to a larger community.
So. It might look like a church service, or it might look like a community gathering with artists and music poems or scripture, things like that are shared. But it ends with that person who shared their story about the trauma of gun violence, picking up a hammer and, and hammering on that gun barrel and being a part of making.
That garden tool that then goes back out into the community. But after that survivor shares, we open or hammers, we open it up to anybody else in the audience who might have been affected by gun violence and invite them into that process as well. And that has expanded to some of our other programs where people are turning in firearms and we're destroying it in front of them.
And as at our larger events, we have multiple stations where those firearms get destroyed. And so. Survivors might be at one of those stations cutting up those guns coming in. We have parents who lost kids in mass shootings who kind of hang out at these events just in case an assault rifle comes in. And if so, then we make space for them to have some time to cut that up.
We also had a volunteer who. Worked with multiple of those events for us, and towards the end of a year of doing it, about four or five times he mentioned, you know, I have suicide ideation, and this time I brought my gun and we cut it up together. And then, you know, after the event ended, he said, I'm pretty sure this saved my life.
It was tempting for me to reach for that firearm and be done with it all. And so we've always had survivors since nearly the beginning who are a part of our board of directors. Whenever we start something, our lens is how accessible can we make this first to survivors? So embody a practice that is safe for folks who could enter into it, unknown to us, having been affected by trauma and not leave re-traumatized.
A lot of us don't realize we are impacted by gun violence. And so at many of our events, pastors will say, wow, I didn't know these 10 people were affected by gun violence because they were given an opportunity to come to the anvil and swing that hammer. And so we might think of like, we need to have churches or community organizations all across the country that are ready and willing to destroy unwanted firearms. That's a piece of it, but also attached to that is those same spaces need to be ready and willing to help people handle the trauma that they've been carrying for so long.
Andrew Stelzer: You're listening to Peace Talks Radio. I'm Andrew Stelzer and I'm speaking with Mike Martin, the co-founder of Raw Tools.People come to Raw Tools when they want to get rid of their firearms and using basic blacksmithing techniques. They turn the guns into garden tools. They transform about 2000 guns a year. Back to our conversation.
You are in Colorado Springs, which arguably the entire United States is gun country, but I think we define Colorado Springs in the middle of quote unquote gun country.
It's also the site of a mass shooting in 2022 at Club QA gay bar. Five people were killed, 25 more were injured. How did you, and how did RAWtools absorb that tragedy and respond? And how has the community changed or transformed since then?
Mike Martin: You know that, like you said, it was only two years ago, so there's still a lot that's happening there. We came alongside local leaders and offered support chaplain services at the memorial site afterwards, but then also worked with local queer organizations to help hold space for folks who wanted to process afterwards. We did that monthly for six months after the shooting, we continued to work with a few other leaders who want to come to the anvil and forge to release some frustration or sadness or anger or grief, all that type of pain. Our job is to stay present and willing to help when requested. Uh, we take the lead of local queer folks who are showing up and, and leading for their communities, and we want to offer support so that they don't have to carry all of that water all at once.
But unfortunately, Colorado Springs have had multiple mass shootings over the last 15 years and we've been around for 12. So, and it goes back even further that one of our board members survived the New Life Church shooting that happened before we formed. And so it feels like that's an issue here. The county that Colorado Springs is in as well as the county to the west and north of us are some of the highest gunning.
Counties in the country per capita. So whether it's the Club Q shooting or someone else who lost a loved one to suicide, that doesn't make the news. Whenever gun violence happens, we're often connected to, to see if, if we're the right, right fit for that person to find some sort of healing or closure, whatever that might be.
Andrew Stelzer: And how do you determine what kind of role religion might play in your approach, especially if they're skeptical? How do you decide when to put your faith out front versus in the background and, and how do you make that determination?
Mike Martin: I would say that it's always there, but it's most present in like one-on-one or small group discussion, especially with other fellow Christians. Colorado Springs is also the, it's a weird Venn diagram where gun ownership and Christianity overlap a lot. So Christians are one of the larger demographics of gun owners in this country, and that's true for our local space too. So when we talk about, you know, we can go back to the old ww JD, what would Jesus do?
And have similar conversations that would line up with that kind of questions. Why do we own these guns? If one of the main reasons for owning a firearm is self-defense and we know that most firearm, at least interpersonal between us and somebody else violence, most firearm violence there is with someone we know or someone who knows someone we know. So are we prepared to pull that trigger and point that gun and someone we will most likely know? And statistics show that guns will be used on us or a loved one three times as much as an intruder in our home. So there's all these different things at play with this, and it really only works to have these more personal conversations to get somewhere and so my faith really helps kind of pull us out of partisan politics and discussions there and really house us in more of a faith-based discussion instead of a politically based discussion. Not to say that faith isn't political, I believe it deeply is we are all deciding how to live with each other.
And our churches have polity, our cities have polity, and our country has polity. It's trying to fit us into a spot where we can have a common frame of reference. If we don't have a common political frame of reference, but we both say we follow Jesus, then that can be a space where we can have a positive, you know, meaningful conversation with each other. So if I'm in more of a corporate space or a public space, a lot of our gun turnin events are with a lot of public partners. It's not gonna be out front, but most people know that. It's what motivates us is this commitment to nonviolent conflict resolution.
And part of that means dealing with the tools in our society that give lethal means. And for firearms, it's very efficient. Lethal means.
Andrew Stelzer: There are a lot of gun buyback programs out there, and most of them, you just turn in the gun to your police station and then you walk away. Um, but in your case, the person often comes back home with it's sort of the gun. It's a physical object that was the gun that's been transformed. How does that affect people?
Mike Martin: Yeah, I do wish we could transform it that fast, but it doesn't always work for someone to turn in a firearm and and save the rest of the day to make something out of it. It's one thing to just turn in a gun at a traditional buyback and hope it gets destroyed and not necessarily know. It's a whole other thing to turn it in, watch it be destroyed, but then also to connect it to something that you receive and. In some cases, those guns were handed down as hunting heirlooms through for multiple generations. We've had one where, you know, grandpa passed away and they didn't really have a safe way to store those firearms, and they had young kids in the home, so they brought it to be destroyed.
But grandma was still alive and grandma was a gardener. So to have a garden tool made out of grandpa's gun, now you have a new heirloom to pass down and it's something that will live on and be a part of that family's legacy. Similar to how the gun was. And it doesn't mean that they had to have a negative experience with that gun.
It just means that the story and the legacy of their family is changing in our current times. And they wanted a way to mark that while also honoring the past. So there's a, a whole piece of building our own stories and what we're gonna tell the next generation. That's connected to this. The garden tools we make out of guns are certainly out of materials that are far better than you're gonna get somewhere else.
So similar to how, how guns are designed to not fail, which means they have to be designed to last, otherwise they wouldn't be safe at all. And the same is true with our garden tools that are made from those guns or jewelry or other pieces. Jewelry's also passed down from generation to generation, so.
It's a way to continue to, um, have something that holds our stories on top of our oral tradition. A an object, a symbol. That means we are changing how our family interacts with this, whether that was a gun or our gun culture in general. Um, something that says in very genuine ways that. I want to live differently, but I also want our whole neighborhood and our community to feel safe and to live differently as well.
And not just in this anti-gun spot, but in this pro neighbor. I want my neighborhood to thrive, and one of the ways we can do that is grow food. I. Or tell our stories about my grandma who taught me this amazing recipe, this soup that she made with vegetables that she grew herself, and that's why gardening was important to her.
It's not just the tool, it's the thing the tools are doing and the people that you're with while you're doing those things that matter.
Andrew Stelzer: Yeah, I think that's an important point. The idea that you can't replace something negative with. Nothing, you have to replace it with something positive. You mentioned community gardens. I know you also connect people to yoga resources. Uh, what, what's the, the larger positive vision? What, what's the community you wanna live in? What does it look like? And, um. Is it possible?
Mike Martin: Well, I'm often told I'm a hopeless romantic, but I really don't believe that this is a hopeless thing because I've seen too many people have some radical positive change, but also plenty of folks who have had very steady small changes that lead to just, you can tell that it's been been a positive impact on their life, whether they turned in a gun or not, or were introduced to. I just need skills of how to have a tough conversation with my family member who I vehemently disagree with. And so I think that the more small little things that we do that advance us towards these communities that say, Hey, we want you to thrive in this space.
That are much more collaborative than competitive. I think all of those pieces connect to this. There's so many different intersections of gun violence. We don't have one, you know, magic pill that is gonna solve all of gun violence. There's a different approach to domestic violence, to suicide, to interpersonal violence, to police violence or state violence.
All of these things need different ways and it's gonna take a lot of different people to do that. And I see we have often here in Colorado, up to 50 volunteers at one event. And we have to cut off our volunteer signup because people want to be a part of this. One of the great things about making, at least our mad that we talked about earlier is that you need two people to do it well.
You can develop tools to make it easy for one person to do it, but it really is something that is done well in pairs, and a lot of blacksmithing is like that. You have multiple people, sometimes around the anvil with one person leading everybody, and I think it's because it's an embodied practice. It's not that we don't need people to write their legislators or call their representatives.
That has to happen too. But we also need other opportunities to really feel like we're using our body. I think that's why marching is really important to a lot of community protesting. We need something to do with our body and this blacksmithing, this, helping people turn in and cut up firearms is a part of that too, but that has to be done with community.
It doesn't happen just by ourselves. And what about the goal of getting rid of guns, if that is your goal, I'm sure plenty of people hear about your work and say, well, that's nice. You're getting rid of a couple thousand guns a year, but this country has hundreds of millions of guns. Yeah, I certainly have felt similar ways. What are we doing? But it, when I hear the story of the mother who lost a son to gun violence when they were a toddler, and then. How positive it was for them to hammer on a gun barrel that might've been donated by somebody else who has no connection to gun violence. Similar to myself when I started this, that it offers us meaningful ways to affect positive changein our communities, and the more and more that happens, the more opportunities we give for that, whether it's in our work or some other type of positive work in the community and mentoring, whatever that might look like, the more we can offer compelling, positive, nurturing spaces in our community. I'm a full believer that more and more people will continue to turn in their firearms, my generation. It's gonna inherit hundreds of millions of firearms and that has nothing to do about what new firearms would be available to us to buy. Because firearms were designed to last long, we are going to start inheriting more and more firearms and we'll have an opportunity to change the legacy of the culture that we're in and a part of.
And I think that's one of those spaces where I find hope if in 50 years when my kids have grandkids. And there are a hundred million guns in this country, that'd be far better than 400 million. So if we cut it in half even is great. And so I think it's really about taking that first step to say, I'm not gonna be a part of harming my friends, my family.
If you're in that faith space and loving your enemy makes sense to you then, and that's really hard. Like this is a constant thing. We have to always work at this. We will always be kind of. Looking towards that possibility of violence as a solution to something that just feels so overwhelming. We feel like it's the only way out, but the more and more we lean into our community, the more and more we will find that there are other ways, other resources, other people to help hold our pain.
And so for me, that's the goal, is to keep creating those little pockets of safe spaces for people where they don't have to be worried about somebody who's gonna. Harm them or at worse take their life. So for me, it's about being a witness and a compelling option for other people to say, I don't have to go down this path of rugged individualism and protect me in mind because our community is our best form of protection.
HOST: That was correspondent Andrew Stelzer speaking with Mike Martin, the co-founder of RAWtools. Martin is trained for restorative justice facilitation dialogue circles, and encourages everyone to explore how they can connect to similar efforts in their communities. He believes turning swords into Plowshares requires a comprehensive approach to gun violence, one that addresses the triggers in our streets and the triggers in our hearts. RAWtools holds guns to gardens. Events across the United States where volunteers are always needed. We'll link to their website at peacetalksradio.com. You can find both parts of this program on our website as well as hear all the programs in our series dating back to 2002.
There's much more detail on all of our shows, as well as a donate button where you can become a peace leader by supporting the nonprofit work that we're doing here at Peace Talks Radio. Do help if you can@peacetalksradio.com. I hope you'll join us in a moment for part two of our program. Coming up, we'll be speaking with Peter Brune, a Swedish activist who has found a safe way to melt dangerous firearms and turn them into beautiful objects, creating pieces of peace in the process.
Stay tuned after this break for correspondent Andrew Stelzer. I'm Jessica Ticktin in for series producer Paul Ingles. Thanks for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
You are listening to Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm Jessica Ticktin in for series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Andrew Stelzer. This is the second half of a two-part program about repurposing firearms. In part one, we heard from Mike Martin, who co-founded Raw Tools, an organization that transforms guns into garden tools.
(Mike Martin Clip)
Providing positive healing spaces for victims of gun violence to come together and use their hands, literally turning something that harms into something that can heal. When we give up these lethal means like firearms, we are asking our bodies to imagine a different way to navigate the world than having a gun on our hip.
And part of that is releasing the trauma that some of us may carry kind of through our arms into the hammer and into that gun barrel that might've brought harm to folks while also simultaneously transforming it into something that's gonna bring life to our community.
This time on Peace Talks Radio.
Andrew speaks with Peter Brune, the co-founder of a project called Humanium Metal transforms illegal seized firearms from governmental weapons destruction programs in regions affected by armed violence into non-lethal commodities for peace. They're then turned into jewelry, pens, and other objects.
The income generated with humanium metal is then reinvested into those same communities which have been affected by gun violence. With the aim of breaking the vicious cycle of violence and poverty. Brune believes upcycling a commodity for killing into a commodity for peace can create a global movement for peace and security.
Let's have him explain exactly what the word humanum means.
Andrew Stelzer: It is spelled pretty much like it looks and it looks pretty much how you'd imagine. Germanium is a metal, we call it the most valuable metal on earth, and it's made of, uh, destroyed and recycled upcycled firearms. Humanium is the name for iron melted down from confiscated illegal firearms.
The metal is then sold to companies which manufacture products with it like pens, jewelry, or chess sets, and the profits go to initiatives in the countries where the guns were being used. Peter Brune started the Humanium Project after working in conflict zones in Latin America where guns were ubiquitous.
It's a very sad situation in humanity where we have never produced as many military equipment as now. Never in human history. It's been as high. When I saw the Humanium website, it looked sleek. It features attractive high-end products that could be conversation starters among people who might actually have power.
Getting people talking about the destruction of guns, the destruction they've caused, and how we can creatively move towards a more peaceful world to Brune that was much better than simply destroying these weapons, which is fine. But in a sense, it disappears them and tries to invisibilize the pain they've produced.
Since the project started in 2016, Humanium has converted at least 6,000 firearms in El Salvador, another 6,000 in Zambia, and even some in the United States. I spoke to project co-founder Peter Brune about the origins and successes of the initiative.
Peter Brune: I mean, firearms is a terrible weapon of mass destruction. Every year, a quarter of million of people are killed by firearms. And I have been working with arms control for many years, and it took me 25 years to, um, come up with this idea of humanum, the idea to, uh, recycle. Firearms. I mean, that's an old concept. It's already the Bible. Weapons to plow shares. Words to plow shares.
The new thing with Humanium is two aspects. One is that we have given this recycled upcycled metal in name. And we've referred to the periodic table and a new element in that sense. And we even, uh, if you look at the symbol of it, you'll uh, see it looks like a new element, HEU. And secondly, what we have done is that we are not just producing, uh, that's good as well if people produce a piece of art or something out of recycled firearms.
But we make it available for producers who want to, um. Make something good of, out of something that has been, uh, used as a lethal tool. It's also here, very important to remember that uh, the only humanum that we craft, that we are kind of mining in that sense comes from. Illegally seized firearms, I mean firearms that have been used by those who shouldn't have held it.
So only firearms that have been seized by relevant authority. Mainly military, but anyway, mainly police. I mean, but it could also be military or other kind of customs controlled, et cetera. A legal authority that say, well, this is a firearm that should not be out there, and we destroy it and the metal we make available and we relabel it to be Humanium, the most valuable metal on earth.
Andrew Stelzer: How does it go from the form of a weapon in the hands of often a paramilitary or somebody involved in a civil war and get turned into something else? How does that process work and how did you first make that happen?
Peter Brune: Hmm. I had been working with firearms controls for a number of years, many years, and uh, there is an init international initiative called the International Action Network on Small Arms, and they managed to get the UN to adopt a, uh.
Program on small arms control. Based on that, I was then also invited to work on this program in the Central American context in a program called Kasa, central American Small Arms Control, central America Being a. Post-conflict region with the civil wars that have been, uh, badly affecting the societies in places like El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, et cetera. But also a very high level of well arms in circulation, a gun culture that kind of continued to create victims of the armed violence, et cetera, and a very high level of armed violence. And we had four different programs in this Central American jointly agreed program, uh, by the different Central American countries.
It was on legislation, it was on training, the law enforcement community, et cetera, awareness about the devastating effects of the armed violence, but also one component of actually destroying a firearms. So I was there destroying firearms, traveling around the Latin American region and physically destroying first, collecting, registering, and, uh, destroying, seized firearms, seized by the police, et cetera. And I. That is where we thought of, well, we should be able to use this metal for something else. Instead of kind of bringing it back into the recycling, where it was used for construction, et cetera. Good steel, high quality steel from the firearms. But the authorities had decided, well, this criminal firearm used in the Civil War or by a criminal person to rob a bank or whatever, this should be destroyed, period. And so they did. And that is where we then started to ask the, uh, government of El Salvador, can we please get this metal? And the proceeds we get from the sales of this metal that will be used for reinvesting it in, uh, conflict, uh, affected, uh, communities.
And they were really, really reluctant, uh, because normally they don't want, uh, this kind of publicity or you just destroy them and then the metal is taken care of. It's at no huge amount. But, uh, we said, well, we can use it, but they said no. In principle, that is where we reached out to the community of survivors because per killed person of firearms, there's, uh, one person killed, but three people who survive.
And there we met survivors, uh, from the armed violence from El Salvador, and a big hero of mine who unfortunately passed away in COVID, he was shot, he was an engineer, car engineer. He was test driving a car in the garage. He where he was working, and he was stopped by a criminal gang who. Took the car, forced him to lay down on the very hot, you know, asphalt in the countryside in El Salvador.
He and his colleague. And the colleague was, it was so warm, the asphalt. So he lifted his head and he was shot and, and this friend of, uh. Amilka was his name. He also looked what happened to my colleague and he was also shot. The colleague passed away after two days in hospital. Amilka survived, but the um, bullet is such, uh, until he died in Covid, he was in his spine causing him an immense pain. And he was in a wheelchair and, and the first two years he was paralyzed and very sad, depressed. But then he said, okay, I will do anything I can to, uh, contribute to an end, to the armed valance. I'll rather be shot again than just looking at this terror continuing. So, um. We, uh, got in touch with him.
We'd reached out to survivors organizations and he said, I'll help you. So he went with us to one of the destruction sites, and he spoke to the manager, and the manager said, well, I have said no. And I would've continued to say no. But Amil car, looking at you, sitting in your wheelchair, listening to your history, I must tell that I, uh, have lost a child in exactly a similar situation because you are here. Amilcar, I'll make sure that you get this metal. That was before we, uh, labeled it Humanium.
Andrew Stelzer: Peter Brune finally had what he wanted, melted down firearms, tangible, raw material, no longer able to wreak harm on the people of El Salvador. But now he needed the funding to get his project off the ground.
Peter Brune: I moved back to Sweden and I was trying to, um, convince different actors here in Sweden. Okay? I have this beautiful idea, I have this metal, and people say, no, it's not strategic plan. You know, arms is very sensitive and you have the NRA, the corresponding organization in Sweden, and they will be upset and then they have all their discourse, et cetera, about why the firearms, it's not the firearm that killed the person who killed, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.
But finally I met a guy who was working in communication and I presented the idea to him and he said, beautiful idea, Peter. I know exactly how to sell this story. And he presented it in a much more convincing way than I would ever have been able of. And then we went to meet an investor, and we still call it the most beautiful, the most amazing, the most valuable metal on earth.
And on the way to this presentation, uh, to this very rich guy, he said, oh, I just came up with a new name. We will call it Hu. And I said, well, you have to change the PowerPoint presentation, everything. No, no, no, no. Just listen to me. I'll sell it as Humanium. And that was a really a, a brilliant touch to give it such a good name.
We convinced one organization where I was working later with, uh, that they should endorse it, embrace it, adopt this initiative, and they're still the owner of it. It sounds like the intention and the, uh. Importance, at least at the beginning, was instead of the destruction of the firearms, the transformation of the firearms, and that had a deeper meaning, particularly to the victims or families of victims of firearms, that transformation, I guess, destruction, begets destruction.
Andrew Stelzer: Can you say more about that difference?
Peter Brune: Absolutely. Uh, and then that is why it was so important that this Salvador y guy came in Amilcar because when I would tell the story, oh, you know, people get killed, and they said, well, this gringo is coming here and telling us about our reality. That didn't fly.
But when Amilcar sitting in his wheelchair with the bullet in his spine and his story told the story. People will start to listen and to cry and say, well, this is madness. Absolutely.
Andrew Stelzer: I'm also wondering about the power of this project. Does that power more about the elimination of the weapon or sort of demonstrating how the weapon can be transformed, because I imagine, I don't know the current statistics, but you're probably not going to melt every gun in the world into humane as much as you'd like to.
Peter Brune: No, absolutely not. And in the end, I mean, there is a legitimate use of, uh, firearms as well. I mean, the police, you can say, well, if it's democratically decided that, well, we want to see that our police force has the capacity to use firearms if absolutely necessary. The last resort, I mean, uh, or hunting or what is called, I mean, sports shooting.
That is all okay. But it's more about the gun culture in the end that we're trying to say. Well, it's not by arming more people. That's not a good way forward to defend yourself. It's not, uh, by, uh, living in gated community that we build for the future. We must build a community built on trust and respect, and the respect is not built because I have a firearm and you have not.
We should build the societies on something else. So it's the gun culture that this project is addressing very much also in settings where there is already social unrest. And, and in the moment if the firearms reach them, the conflict that traditionally well wouldn't have lethal consequences suddenly transformed into lethal consequences.
So it's about also stopping the proliferation of illegal firearms beyond the controlled licensed distribution. There's also a component of social injustices. There is a very clear link between poverty and levels of violence. It's a complex relationship. You cannot say poor people are violent because that's not the conclusion.
But if you in a. Poor society or a very unjust society where they very rich people and very poor people have a high prevalence of firearms. The likelihood that those firearms will be used, uh, causing human suffering, et cetera, are much higher. So it's about addressing the negative culture of a gun violence that is kind of a higher goal in the sense,
Andrew Stelzer: I don't think we can talk about gun culture without mentioning the United States. The first, I guess you'd say, non developing country that Humanium worked with was the US I believe with police departments in the state of Maine. In the United States, the conversation about guns is often about keeping them legal and who's allowed to have them and should there be any rules about who can have them.
But when you go to the rest of the world, the conversation is much more about illegal guns. I think most of the guns that kill people in other parts of the world are obtained through the black market. Are those two conversations totally different? Are those parts of the same conversation? Where do you think is there an overlap?
Peter Brune: Well, it is part of the same conversation, definitely. And again, I think the right way to address this is talking about gun culture, and in that sense we can talk about. Cultures that we not necessarily are in favor of. When I grew up, it has changed a little bit, but you could sometimes in parts of Sweden is referred to as part of the vodka belt.
So a very negative, destructive way of, uh, drinking, uh, Friday or Saturday evening, and domestic violence and suffering, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a negative alcohol culture that we still have in many ways in Sweden. And you can talk about a repressive culture on, um, gender equality in countries or societies.
That's not saying that the people are bad or that their country is bad. It's about a culture where you need to talk about the cultural aspect of it in order to also address it and address it successfully in that sense. So talking about the gun culture. I dare to say it, even if I'm not American. I love America.
I really enjoy visiting America, but uh, maybe it's not for the gun culture that I'm visiting America. One thing I wonder about, again, being a non-American, but I mean you have a lot of amendments to the Constitution that you have changed. For example, that the women have the right to vote. They didn't have that from the beginning, I think.
Yeah. And then you say, well that one we could change, but the second amendment that we cannot change, why can't you country change that amendment if you have changed so many other uh, issues where you said, well. This is sacred, but this one is actually not that sacred women may vote. So, uh, the US situation is special.
Absolutely. Many, many, many suicides are committed by firearms. So if you are defending life, uh, if you say, well, we must make sure that we defend life though. The number of people who should not have had the opportunity to use the firearms for a suicide attempt. So I think there are many arguments which the US could also, um, US population could think about applying strict arms control because it's also about the, uh, availability. The best example is the UK firearms are forbidden. In principle, private people do not have access to firearms in the us There is violence in the UK as well. I. But it's mainly committed with other tools, uh, knives, et cetera. And that's also often with lethal consequences, but firearms are so much more dangerous, so they're stopping the firearms reaching, for example, underage people or people with psychological challenges, et cetera.
You save lives, and I guess that's an important aspect of the American debate as well.
Andrew Stelzer: This is Peace Talks Radio. I'm Andrew Stelzer. I'm speaking with Peter Brune who helped create Humanum a project which melts down illegal guns into a metal that can be used for products unrelated to violence. The proceeds from those items like wristwatches or spinning tops are used to fund initiatives preventing gun violence.
And supporting survivors in the regions of the world. The guns were taken from as of 2021. Humanium has raised over a million dollars. Back to our conversation. I'm wondering how you. Got here, and I know you worked for many years on a number of conflict zones, central America, Afghanistan. Now you're working with an organization called War Child, which supports children healing from war and conflict.
Another NGO, uh, karitas advocacy for human rights of migrants and refugees. There seems to be a focus, including humane on supporting people. Post-conflict. How has your focus developed over the years and how did you get into this work? How did you arrive on, in these particular, uh, sort of sub zones of peace and conflict work?
Peter Brune: Uh, one decisive experience for me, uh, was actually when I did the military service in Sweden long time ago now, and I started really to reflect on, well, is this the way we should, um, try to live together as humanity? So that was one. Aspect where I was questioning, well, aren't there other responses to the challenges we have as humanity rather than arming ourselves?
And now it's a very sad situation in humanity where we have never produced as many military equipment as now, never in human history. It's been as high. And other aspect was when I was around 20, 22 years old, I started to. Backpack in, uh, Latin America actually. And, and you saw the, um, injustices in the societies and you start to reflect about, well, where do these injustices come from?
And I often heard people saying, well, you know, those. Poor people, they want to be poor. If they would only get their act together, they could become rich and get a decent life, et cetera. And I said, well, I don't want to take away their agency and their own responsibility, but there is also a structural dimension to it that we need to address as well 'cause, uh, structural injustice, I said, well, if you grow up in a very vulnerable circumstances. With high levels of criminality in the neighborhood, fear among people. You have maybe family members who have chosen a criminal lifestyle. All these are factors that contribute to you also going in a way where you end up not in a situation where you promote peaceful cohabitation. So, um, I'm not at all in any way a hero or something. I have had a few good ideas maybe. Um, but uh, in the end it's all about promoting a, uh, way of where people can live together, not being scared. I mean, there's concept called, um, human security where we are free not to only defend ourselves, but where we say, well.
We are free to the extent where I don't have to defend myself, that's true freedom and that's a society we should strive for. And that's maybe an incentive for me saying, well, the freedom from fear and the freedom from want, uh, those are concepts that kind of form the basis for what we could call human security and peaceful cohabitation, peaceful societies.
Well, we grew up in the cultures we grew up in, but I'm glad that I've been able to work for institutions, organization that have set these as goals that you want to kind of, um, dedicate yourself to.
Andrew Stelzer: Are there products that you would like to see made with Humianum that have been cost prohibitive or just a willing producer hasn't been found?
Peter Brune: Absolutely. I mean anything, I often got the question, so if an arms producer would come and say, well, I want to make a new firearm of it, and then would say, of course you can buy uranium, but we have a very special price only for you and it will cost you a hundred million times as much as another producer would buy it for.
That was kind of then that would be bringing so much money that we would, uh, say that, okay, we can live with the consequence of this. It's good steel. Really good steal in firearms. Uh, so, um, melting, it is an easy process. Uh, you don't have to purify it very much. There's one Swedish watchmaker who produced watches.
It's an, um, producer called, uh, Triwa, transforming the industry of watches. And, and they of course choose a label to say, uh, it's time for peace, or was involved when, uh. Sweden had the presidency of the United Nations Security Council and the Swedish Ambassador, who was the president for half a year of the security council.
At the end of the, this term, he handed over to all the, um, members of the security Council, the Russian Ambassador of the US Ambassador, Chinese Ambassador, et cetera, and said, ladies and gentlemen. It's time for peace, and here you'll get a watch That is a concrete expression of this. Um, so that was quite nice.
We have to believe in peace, uh, and that peace is possible if you then say, well, there are, it's only a theoretical experiment, maybe now, but it doesn't rule out that we as human beings in the future will actually be able to build a better society. We must at least give it a try.
Andrew Stelzer: We are speaking with Peter Brune, the co-founder of Humanium.
I'm wondering if you think we can have a peaceful world if there are still guns in it? And a sort of a counter question to that is, can we have a peaceful world without guns or some sort of weapon to quote unquote protect the peace? I think some people would say weapons have always existed and they're necessary.
Peter Brune: So, I mean the vision as we actually can read it about it in the Old Testament where you say, well convert Schwarz to plow. That's a vision. And I mean, honestly, yes, it's a vision that is maybe far away. I. But I think it's important to have visions where we do believe that human beings can live together.
And there are ways to promoting, uh, these situations, take away the injustices, take away the fear among people. Take away the causes for injustices and all this, uh, are steps towards the vision. We often think about, well, society's long time ago where they, how could they do this to each other? Uh, I fear that people will say the same about us when they maybe in 200 years, look back at the, uh.
Beginning of the 21st century and say, well, how could these people do that to each other? That's so cruel and inhumane and barbaric. But then we have to have a vision where we say, well, let's, let's strive to something at least something better.
HOST: That was correspondent Andrew Stelzer speaking with Peter Brune, the co-founder of Humanium As a member of the Council on Peace and Conflict Resolution at the Swedish Foreign Ministry.
Brune is a veteran in international civil society organizations related to disarmament and international development cooperation. Humanium website has lots of information including video profiles of gun violence victims who are now involved with the project. We'll link to that on our website, peace Talks radio.com.
In part one of the program, we also featured Mike Martin, the founder and executive director of RAWtool Mike Martin, a former youth and young adult pastor, also co-authored a 2019 book titled Beating Guns about why Christians should be concerned about gun violence and how they can be part of the solution.
To learn more about this program, go to peace talks radio.com and look for season 23, episode five. You can also hear all the programs in our series dating back to 2002. See photos of our guests, read and share transcripts. It's also where you can sign up for our podcast, and importantly, where you can make a donation to keep this program running into the future.
Support comes from listeners like you, as well as the Albuquerque Community Foundation Ties Fund and KUNM at the University of New Mexico. Nola Daves Moses is our executive director, Allie Adleman, composed and performed our theme music for correspondent Andrew Stelzer, co-founders Paul Ingles and Suzanne Kryder.
I'm Jessica Ticktin. Thank you so much for listening to and for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
