Last Saturday, I’d planned to spend the day cleaning the apartment while listening to TV coverage of the March to Save Lives. I hadn’t so much as picked up a dust rag before the action on the screen caught my attention and held me transfixed for the rest of the day. Also in several instances, brought me to tears. It was such an impressive display by young people — teenagers and younger — brought together from all over the country, from inner cities and affluent suburbs, and places in between, representing different races and ethnicities, all united in the common conviction that gun violence must stop. They give hope for the future.

In the days after the March, praise was effusive for the young organizers and guarded optimism expressed that at long last some changes could possibly come about. I thought about all that lethal hardware, more than enough to arm every man, woman and child in the nation, with plenty left over to inflict on other countries. What could be done with it all?

And then I remembered the Flame of Peace Monument I saw in Timbuctu. It had been erected to mark the end of the Tuareg uprising in the 1990s. The Tuareg are descendants of nomadic  Berber camel drivers and traders who once roamed the Sahara and the Sahel, that great swath of Africa between the Sahara Desert and the green and forested areas to the south. They are dark-skinned with Caucasian features and frequently dress in long robes, called boubous, and with distinctive turbans that wind around the head and include a veil, called a tagelmoust that extends to cover the rest of the face. (I assumed the head-and-face-covering was designed as protection against the swirling desert sand, but research informed me that there was much more to it. Presumably, it also accommodates the social requirement of not showing one’s face to a person of higher rank.)

In the 1970s and ’80s, extended droughts caused huge losses of livestock among the Tuaregs who felt the national government was not doing enough to help their area of Mali. Civil war was averted when the Tuaregs were given more prominence in government and civil service positions. A ceremonial burning took place of 3,000 weapons, many of which are incorporated into the peace monument.

So what about that? Let the peaceful gun owners keep their firearms (properly purchased and licensed by those of an agreed-upon age) for hunting, target shooting, trap and skeet competitions, and for  those who feel the need, protection for themselves and their families. Consign the weapons of war to the military. And all others? Follow the Tauregs’ example: Destroy them or turn them into art.

Note: You can read about my entire trip to Timbuctu in African Tales on this website.