César López, a sculptor of Columbian extraction is creating custom guitars out of decommissioned guns, such as AK-47s. The instruments are called escopetarras, a portmanteau of the Spanish escopeta meaning "rifle" and guitarra meaning, well, guitar. "The idea came to Lopez back in 2003 when, while playing in front of a Bogota country club, he witnessed a car bomb explode. In the ensuing confusion, he noticed how the army guards all carried their rifles in a manner that resembled the way he carried his guitar and out of that explosion came the first escopetarra—a Winchester rifle/Fender Stratocaster hybrid. "
