Biography
Joe Gump was a Chicago-area Catholic peace activist who—alongside his family—participated in civil-rights work and later became deeply engaged in anti-nuclear organizing through the Plowshares movement. His public activism is often described as a late-life intensification of earlier commitments to faith-based justice and nonviolence.
His best-known arrest stemmed from a direct-action anti-nuclear protest on August 5, 1987, when he and Jerry Ebner entered a missile silo site near Butler, Missouri, poured blood in the shape of a cross, and sabotaged elements of the site’s electrical and alarm systems as a symbolic act of “disarmament.” They were arrested, convicted, and Gump received a 30-month federal prison sentence. He remained identified with the movement’s broader effort to treat nuclear weapons as a moral emergency rather than a normal instrument of state policy.
Federal release and sentencing verified
The historical Joe Gump profile identifies Jean Dalton Gump's husband, father of twelve, engineer and Jerry Ebner's Transfiguration Plowshares co-defendant, and prints register number 04468-045. Its complete pages 178-179 were visually checked. The original profile and movement chronology record December 11, 1987 sentencing before Judge Howard Sachs, with a 30-month imposed prison term. Original historical profile, pages 178-179; Movement chronology, Transfiguration Plowshares (West).
A fresh ordinary Find By Number search in the official federal locator on October 12, 2026 returned JOSEPH A GUMP, register 04468-045, not in BOP custody as of November 15, 1989. This identity-linked result replaces the former November-only release with exact day precision and establishes the alias Joseph A. Gump. It indicates exit from federal custody, not termination of all supervision or custody in every jurisdiction. The age field does not establish that a deceased person is alive. Official Federal Bureau of Prisons locator.
The actual later prison-admission date remains unknown. No admission is back-calculated from the imposed sentence or inferred from sentencing. The automated arrest-to-release interval is not a verified continuous prison stay. Existing identified photograph retained; the younger Cook County lawyer with the same everyday name is not this person.
