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Guns into Plowshares

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Guns into Plowshares
Guns into Plowshares

Guns into Plowshares is a sculpture by Mennonite artists Esther Augsburger and Michael Augsburger. It depicts the blade of a giant plow, fashioned out of steel and 3,000 disabled handguns. It stands sixteen feet tall and weighs four tons. The work alludes to a passage from the Book of Isaiah in which the ancient Israelite prophet envisions a future when people "shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2:4; cf. Micah 4:3). The image of transforming swords to plowshares has been widely adopted by social and political groups working for peace. The sculpture was conceived in 1994, when the artists heard of a gun buyback program coordinated by the Washington, D.C., police. After three years of work, Guns into Plowshares was completed in 1997 and erected in Judiciary Square. Since October 2017, it has stood on the campus of Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Guns into Plowshares (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Guns into Plowshares
College Avenue, Harrisonburg

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N 38.4699 ° E -78.8795 °
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College Avenue
22802 Harrisonburg
Virginia, United States
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Guns into Plowshares
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Harrisonburg, Virginia
Harrisonburg, Virginia

Harrisonburg is an independent city in the Shenandoah Valley region of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is also the county seat of the surrounding Rockingham County, although the two are separate jurisdictions. At the 2020 census, the population was 51,814. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Harrisonburg with Rockingham County for statistical purposes into the Harrisonburg, Virginia Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 126,562 in 2011.Harrisonburg is home to James Madison University (JMU), a public research university with an enrollment of over 20,000 students, and Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), a private, Mennonite-affiliated liberal arts university. Although the city has no historical association with President James Madison, JMU was nonetheless named in his honor as Madison College in 1938 and renamed as James Madison University in 1977. EMU largely owes its existence to the sizable Mennonite population in the Shenandoah Valley, to which many Pennsylvania Dutch settlers arrived beginning in the mid-18th century in search of rich, unsettled farmland.The city has become a bastion of ethnic and linguistic diversity in recent years. Over 1,900 refugees have been settled in Harrisonburg since 2002. As of 2014, Hispanics or Latinos of any race make up 19% of the city's population. Harrisonburg City Public Schools (HCPS) students speak 55 languages in addition to English, with Spanish, Arabic, and Kurdish being the most common languages spoken. Over one-third of HCPS students are English as a second language (ESL) learners. Language learning software company Rosetta Stone was founded in Harrisonburg in 1992, and the multilingual "Welcome Your Neighbors" yard sign originated in Harrisonburg in 2016.