Blacksmiths pulled glowing slabs of metal from a small forge and instructed UMass Dartmouth students how to hammer them into gardening equipment or heart-shaped jewelry on Thursday, March 27.

But this was no ordinary blacksmithing demonstration — all of the metal came from locally sourced guns.

On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, the New Bedford and Fall River police departments held a “guns for groceries” event where residents could turn in their guns with no questions asked in exchange for Market Basket gift cards and Domino’s Pizza coupons.

A total of 229 guns were turned in, with 170 from Fall River and 59 from New Bedford. While the guns collected in Fall River were destroyed, the ones people turned in in New Bedford were brought to the New Bedford police station where the long guns and handguns were cut apart.

Matthew Roy, the assistant vice chancellor for civic engagement at UMass Dartmouth and Right Reverend James Curry, a retired Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut and a founding member of Bishops United Against Gun Violence, collected the metal for the March 27 demonstration.

“We're not trying to take anyone's weapon or mess with anyone's second amendment rights if they want the weapon,” Roy said. “We’re just trying to make the community safer.”

Swords to Plowshares, a New Haven-based organization that works to raise awareness about gun violence, focuses on suicide, domestic violence and child deaths caused by guns with a mission to “transform ourselves and our neighborhoods from violence to nurture,” Curry said during the demonstration.

Blacksmiths from Swords to Plowshares guided UMass students through the steps of making a small shovel from a gun barrel and heart-shaped necklaces from a handgun or BB gun. The organization also makes three-pronged garden hoes.

“We can shape garden tools from an instrument of potential great harm to an instrument of great nurture,” Curry said.

Creating heart-shaped jewelry is symbolic of the transformation from violence to peace, he said.

“Hope starts first with our own heart,” he added. “So that’s what we’re about.”

Curry said that all of the gardening tools Swords to Plowshares craft are given away to community gardens, universities, churches and schools all over New England.

Roy said there is symbolism in hammering something that’s dangerous and transforming it into something “either beautiful in the case of the jewelry, or productive in the case of the gardening tools.”

He explained that the tools can be used to grow flowers and vegetables while the jewelry becomes something “beautiful that folks would wear out and around.”

The UMass Dartmouth event, which the university holds every other year, sends a message of public safety while also showing that things that could potentially be dangerous “can become community assets and something that’s actually beautiful,” Roy said.

“I think students get that message through active participation,” he said.