COLUMBUS, Ohio — As gun violence continues to impact many central Ohio communities, one local church is working to take unwanted guns off the street and turn them into something good.
Over the past year, First Community Church has been collecting and disarming safely surrendered, unwanted guns off the streets. People from all over central Ohio have been able to get their guns disarmed and taken off their hands, no questions asked.
The guns are then converted into pieces of art that the church displays.
“The whole process can be therapeutic for many folks,” said Pastor Tim Vansant.
Vansant said they’ve collected close to 50 guns to use for art. On top of getting guns off the street, the church is also expanding the conversation about safe gun storage and gun violence in our community.
“We want to provide that service to folks but we also know there’s a lot of guns in America, and there is a lot of gun violence that is occurring in our communities. So beyond just collecting these guns, which is a great thing to do we wanted to open up the conversation about gun violence prevention,” said Vansant.
The movement has grown so much over the past year that the church is hosting a gun-safe storage event Thursday night. There will also be a panel discussion surrounding gun violence in our community.
Vansant said many of the guns that are surrendered to them have a triggering effect for some people, and they want to help continue the conversation about how this impacts everyone.
“We’ve had people who’ve known of children or had people in their family who’ve been in school shootings. We interact with a lot of folks around town that have seen you know more street shootings. So it affects communities,” he said.
The gun safe storage event will be at the north campus of First Community Church on 3777 Dublin Road. The event starts at 6 p.m.