The “gun pump” is made of a snub-nosed .38 revolver, a 12-gauge shotgun, a .410 shotgun, and an AR-15 assault rifle. The “rope,” is actually a heavy-gauge wire, strung with .45 caliber slugs, looped over the wheel of a jogging stroller. Cranked by hand, the rope draws water up into the barrel of the .410, and out a spout near the middle.
Artist and blacksmith Jason Smith has welded, melted, pounded and shaped many objects in his Decatur studio, but he’s never cut up a shotgun before.
Yet he found himself doing just that recently, constructing a Dali-esque contraption out of a snub-nosed .38 revolver, a .410 shotgun, a 12-gauge shotgun and an AR-15 assault rifle.
The project was commissioned by Columbia Presbyterian Church in Decatur, which, this morning, packed up Smith's creation to send it to Louisville, Ky., where leaders in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. were waiting.
It so happens that the national headquarters of the church is very close to the convention hall where the National Rifle Association is currently holding its annual meeting, attracting 70,000 gun enthusiasts to the downtown Louisville.
Members of the church plan to display Smith’s creation outside the NRA gathering, quietly demonstrating how to beat swords into ploughshares.
Not that Smith's creation is a ploughshare, but it has something in common with the directive from the book of Isaiah to turn weapons of war into tools of peace. This sculpture is not only weirdly beautiful, it is also a functioning agricultural implement called a rope pump, a low-cost, simple machine that has become a useful device in drought-stricken Malawi and South Sudan. If you want to find out how a rope pump works, go to this site.
This particular rope pump is over-engineered and unnecessarily robust for the job of drawing water. But it’s well-designed for drawing attention.
“There’s a fun kind of whimsy to the thing,” said Smith, putting some last-minute touches on the pump Friday morning. (Smith donated his time to the project free of charge.) “Maybe that will defuse the conversation so we can talk.”
They hope to spark that conversation in Louisville and around the country by building and displaying other de-weaponized rope pumps.
“We hope that the rope pump will call awareness to two great needs in this world: the need for some common sense gun control in this nation, and the desperate need for fresh water in Malawi and the South Sudan,” said Tom Hagood, minister at Columbia Presbyterian.
“Both issues involve saving the lives of children.”
Columbia supports a mission in Malawi, where Jim and Jodi McGill run workshops teaching residents how to build their own rope pumps.
Hagood said the guns used in Smith’s creation were donated to the church, except for the AR-15, which church leaders agreed to purchase for the project. Hagood bought the upper assembly online. “I’ve never been in a church meeting where they approved the purchase of a gun part,” he said.
David Barnhart, a filmmaker whose documentary "Trigger" traces the ripple effect of a single shooting, is following the progress of the project, and was on hand Friday as Smith loaded the pump into a truck bound for Kentucky.
Those who want to assist the effort to provide clean water in Malawi, can go to pcusa.org/give/E862703 (designate "guns to pumps" in the comments.) Those who want to donate guns to the project can contact Hagood at Columbia Presbyterian Church, 711 Columbia Dr., Decatur, Ga 30030.
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