MADISON, Wis. — A former Wisconsin pastor has found his retirement calling: melting down guns and turning them into garden tools.
Jeff Wild spent most of his adult life as a pastor, leading congregations in Madison, Janesville and Racine.
Now on a nice day, you may find him in his garage on the west side of Madison.
“This is actually the barrel of a shotgun,” he said as he held up a small gardening shovel. “I have a friend that has a laithe, and he’ll put the handles in for me.”
His retirement hobby is turning guns into garden tools and garden ornaments. One of his ornaments is a little kayaker, with a pickaxe for the kayak, and the person is made out of his stepfather’s shotgun.
He first read about this idea years ago in a book called Beating Swords.
“[It’s] based on an Old Testament biblical passage in Isaiah, which is about beating swords into plow shares, and spears into pruning hooks,” he said.
The authors of that book started the organization called RAWtools, the group Wild works through. The whole message is about turning something that can be used to harm into something used to sustain life.
Of course, as a retired pastor, helping others is nothing new for Wild. He’s been there for people in the middle of their happiest and saddest moments. He planted a food pantry garden that produces 5,000 pounds of food for the hungry.
He was inspired by this idea that he could help reduce gun violence by turning guns themselves into something else.
Wild learned how to blacksmith in Door County at a weeklong class, plus weekends in Mineral Point.
“Those situations are just learning the fundamentals of blacksmithing. But at the end of February, I was out in Vermont visiting my son,” he said. “He and my daughter and my wife set me up with a master blacksmith out there, and he and I worked out there for an afternoon just with gun barrels.”
Turning guns into tools is a practice, not a science.
“It’s not easy working with gun barrels because they’re hollow,” he said. “It’s a bit more dangerous than working with solid steel, because the heat travels up the barrel. So you have to be very careful.”
People hand over their guns to Wild as a way of recycling.
“They have guns they wanna get out, might be grandparents with young children, or parents with young children, who want a safer home,” he said.
There doesn’t need to be a child living in the house for it to be safer without a gun around. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people ages 10-34 in America, according to the CDC. It’s the fourth and fifth leading cause for people between ages 35 and 54.
“As a pastor, I probably presided at a good dozen funerals of suicides. Almost all of them were death by firearms,” Wild said. “I could see the pain of the family members, and even my own pain, knowing these people. Being so desperate that they feel they can’t live any longer… that’s part of this, too.”
He may not be in front of a congregation anymore, but this is his way of serving his God, and his fellow man.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has instructions on its website on how to dismantle any gun. Everyone who legally owns a firearm has the right to dismantle it, and doesn’t have to report that to a government agency. This falls within that person’s right, it’s just Wild dismantling the gun for them.