A fountain in a public park in Santa Fe, New Mexico, features a 1979 sculpture depicting a brother and sister playing—the sister aiming a garden hose at the brother, who's aiming a water pistol back at her. But after vandals targeted the sculpture, scrawling "NO GUN" on the boy's leg, the sculptor vowed to chisel off the boy's hand and make him a new one so that he, too, would be holding a hose.

And in Baltimore, plans for a mural of Harriet Tubman at the headquarters of the Associated Black Charities were shelved because she was to be depicted holding a musket.

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