WALTHAM — Blacksmith John Hayden fires up the forge, stokes the coals, and heats the rifle barrel of a disabled Remington Sportsman 58 shotgun until it glows the color of “Orange Crush.”
Then he carefully transfers it to an anvil, puffs his cheeks out and smashes it with a hammer.
There’s something cathartic, even downright biblical, about turning a gun into a garden trowel. It’s like beating swords into plowshares, he says.
“It feels good,” he says, smiling. “It opens like a flower.”
Hayden is co-founder of the Massachusetts chapter of Guns2Gardens, a national organization that turns discarded firearms into garden tools.
“What’s doubly rewarding about this,” Hayden says at Prospect Hill Forge. " is I get to answer the hope that the gun donor had when they wanted something better to come of their lethal tool.”
Hayden helped start Guns2Gardens in 2019, inspired by similar programs by blacksmiths in Colorado and Connecticut.
He teamed up with Dr. Michael Hirsh, a pediatric surgery professor at UMass Memorial Medical Center and UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, who started “Goods for Guns” in 2002.
Owners are encouraged to turn in their guns, no questions asked, in exchange for up to $150 gift card. In December, 134 firearms were bought back, including 62 long guns and 73 pistols, BB guns, or replicas.
Hirsh says the relationship with the Worcester police and the district attorney is key to a successful program.
“Not every police department embraces these gun buybacks. They may have been involved in a crime, they may be illegally possessed, but we don’t care,” he says. “We just want to get them off the street and out of people’s homes where they can get burglarized or used by a depressed teen, a demented elderly person, or an inquisitive toddler.”
At Guns2Gardens, blacksmiths volunteer to melt the firearms down to turn them into tools, which are made available to community garden clubs.
UMass medical school uses tools in its community garden, from which produce is donated to the Worcester County Food Bank.
Hayden and Hirsh say they volunteer because gun violence has touched their lives. Hayden, a former engineer, lost one of his relatives to suicide, after a medication change.
“They had a handgun in their home,” he says. “Would that story have turned out different if they hadn’t had the handgun on that particularly dark day? I would have hoped so, but it is something that stuck with me. It’s very sad that that person isn’t with us today.”
Hayden is not antigun. He grew up hunting in the Midwest.
“If anybody wants to keep their gun, they want to use it for hunting or for personal protection, that’s their call. But when they’ve reached this point, in a quiet moment of reflection where they say, ‘I’m done,’ [the weapon] can be transformed into something that is helpful in improving the well-being of their community.”
Hayden also organizes workshops to “give the public a chance to step up to the iron table and pick up the hammer and make a change.”
A class he held for YouthGROW, an urban agriculture program for Worcester teens, was a big hit. “The work that he is doing, our youth are very excited and inspired by it,” says Vanessa Calixto, program coordinator at YouthGROW.
The tools they made now are used by small farms that grow leafy vegetables, eggplants, tomatoes, zucchini, and ginger.
“We grow food, and that food goes back into our farmer’s market, and it gets donated to several different places, anything that is not sold,” she says. “And I think being able to reclaim ( a firearm) and give it a new purpose is really beautiful.”
Eventually, Hayden hopes to get police and elected officials in Boston involved in gun buybacks.
“In the city of Boston there are over 100 community gardens. I’d love to see gardeners being able to use tools like this.’’
Hayden says he knows his work addresses just part of a big problem. Both he and Hirsh have received threatening emails.
“Gun buybacks will address a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of firearms that are in circulation but that doesn’t mean that we don’t do it,” Hayden says. “One less gun is a good thing.”
Hirsh agrees.
In 1981, his colleague, Dr. John Wood, was shot and killed during a robbery in front of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York. There were many witnesses; none stepped forward.
Hirsh rushed to save his best friend, helping open up his chest and doing emergency surgery.
“We tried for a good hour. My hand was on his heart,” he says. “I will never forget that day. It haunts me still. I get blue on November 2nd every year.”
Hirsh says he is amazed by the resiliency of gunshot victims. On a local cable medical TV show, he interviewed a Worcester boy who was shot at 13.
“He was sitting on his aunt’s porch on a beautiful summer night, and all of a sudden gunfire broke out and a bullet went right through his spine and left him as a paraplegic,” says Hirsh. “And he really struggled to come to terms with it for two years.”
The boy later studied communications at Brown University and now is a DJ/record producer, Hirsh says.
Before the end of their interview, Hirsh asked the teen “is there anything you want to say before we sign off?”
The young man did indeed have a final thought.
“He says ‘Doc, I wish they would have gotten one more gun.’”
Stan Grossfeld can be reached at stanley.grossfeld@globe.com.