Artist Turns Guns into Musical Instruments

In a city riddled with gun violence, one artist chose to turn something negative to positive. In his project titled "Disarm", Mexican artist Pedro Reyes turns confiscated guns into musical instruments.

"It occurred to me to make musical instruments, because music is the opposite of weapons," Reyes said. "This exercise of transformation we see with the guns, is what we would like to see in society."

[AP]For the project titled "Disarm," Reyes said he was able to choose his instruments from about 6,700 guns that were turned in or seized by the army and police in Ciudad Juarez, a city of about 1.3 million people that averaged about 10 killings a day at the height of the violence. In 2010, Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas. Juarez had a murder rate about 230 per 100,000 inhabitants. The nationwide rate for the U.S. that year was 4.8.

"It's important to consider that many lives were taken with these weapons, as if a sort of exorcism was taking place," sculptor Pedro Reyes said in a description of his project emailed to The Associated Press. When they were played, he said, "the music expelled the demons they held, as well as being a requiem for lives lost."