Pedro Reyes: Holistic Cultural Change
Despite the daily gun violence plaguing American cities like Philadelphia, Chicago or New Orleans, it's the mass shootings at a school or a theater or a public event -- like the tragedies in Newtown, Aurora and Tucson -- that trigger outrage and preventive action. Pedro Reyes is not merely one of many concerned citizens. Instead of bemoaning the many children and law enforecement officers whose names appear, sorrowfully, on the lists of victims, and instead of relying on government solutions, Reyes orchestrated a multi-faceted project to address the problem. 
President Obama would be well-served by studying his approach. The President, responding to the terrible massacre of youngsters and teachers in a Connecticut elementary school, created a task force to develop "concrete proposals" for dealing with gun violence.
Today, newspaper headlines have devoted extensive space to reports that the City of Santa Fe has initiated a Gun Buy-Back Program dubbed “Operation Safe Streets”. The goal of the program is to provide a safe way for members of the community to dispose of unwanted firearms and keep these weapons from ending up in the hands of criminals. Wells Fargo is supportiing the progam by providing Visa gift cards in return for operational firearms: $150 for any operational handgun, $100 for any operational long gun, and $200 for any operational high capacity or assault weapon.
While this effort is laudable, it lacks all six measures that Reyes devised to maximize the effectiveness of this initiative.
l. Information: Reyes produced television ‘ads’ explaining how the collection would be conducted.
2. Advocacy: Reyes enlisted the support of woman by offering household appliances in exchange for guns, not a neutral Visa card.
3. Cause: Reyes identified the reason for the proliferation of guns among the dealers in drugs, specifically targeting the young men who are most likely to be drawn to a life of crime and violence. They were enlisted to help with the dismantling process.
4. Efficiencey: Reyes uses the destroyed weapons as materials for manufacturing a useful item, instead of destroyed them by cutting, burning, chopping and/or any other method which will render the weapon inoperable.
5. Effect: Reyes addresses the fact that, besides violence against people, the plants and animals are also innocent victims of gun violence because their habitats are destroyed to plant poppies.
6. Cultural change: Reyes invites people everywhere to participate in these dual solutions (gun violence and deforestation) by using the shovel to plant a tree, and to maintain it.