Reverend wins rifle -- and wants it destroyed
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Oregon Rev. Jeremy Lucas can’t wait to destroy his raffle prize.
That’s because Lucas, who preaches at the Christ Church Episcopal Parish in Lake Oswego, won an AR-15 two weeks ago in a local raffle designed to help a girls softball team pay for a trip to a California tournament.
Lucas said he's a fan of the team, but no fan of the weapon.
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“This was right after the shootings in Baton Rouge and there was a lot of heat and energy around the issue of guns,” he told The Oregonian. “I want to live in a world where a girls softball team doesn’t have to raffle off a gun because it’s the quickest way to make money.”
So Lucas bought 150 of the 499 raffle tickets using $3,000 in church discretionary funds, and hoped the odds were in his favor.
They were. And now that he’s the owner of an AR-15, he needs to figure out the best way to dispose of it. He told The Oregonian that he’s contacting local artists to try to turn the weapon into art.
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“I want it to be a symbol where we take something destructive, because a gun can never be constructive, and turn it into something else,” Lucas said. “Even if it’s one gun out of a million, it’s one less for someone to hurt someone else or themselves with.”