Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd's "The Knotted Gun"

by Mona Goldwater, 2nd Amendment Editor

In 1980 Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd created a sculpture usually called “Non violence” or “The knotted gun”:

When the artist learned that his friend, John Lennon, had been murdered, he became so upset and angry over this senseless death and the many other outbursts of unnecessary violence that he went to his studio and started working on the “non-violence” project. “My first sketches in three dimensions were rather rough and simple, but the important thing was that the idea of the knotted barrel was with me from the very start,” he said.

Reuterswärd created many variations of the piece, the most famous being the one installed in 1985 in Malmo/Sweden. It is a bronze version of a .45-calibre revolver, in which the barrel is tied into a knot. The gun is cocked, but the knot bottles up any execution. 

Replicas of the sculpture have been installed in many countries since then, including one in Manhattan, on the grounds of the United Nations.

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