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Program seeks to use seized guns for good in El Salvador

Firearms presented by El Salvador Ministry of Defense for their subsequent destruction as part of the Humanium Metal Initiative, in Quezaltepeque, El Salvador, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

By DAVID BARRAZA

Associated Press

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — In one of the world’s most deadly countries, a Swedish development organization is trying to turn a source of death into a resource that combats gun violence.

The Humanium Metal Initiative was launched in El Salvador in November. It aims to take guns off the streets and have the metal recycled and sold, with the revenue being funneled back into anti-violence programs, according to IM Swedish Development Partner, the group behind the initiative. “Humanium” is the name it gives to the metal produced from recycled guns.

Hans Blix, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a supporter of the gun initiative, said that when you see an ingot of the recycled gun metal you understand how it can be used for different purposes.

“You can make a pistol or a revolver of it and it’s lethal,” Blix said. But the same metal also “can be used for very good purposes.”

In 2015, gang violence pushed El Salvador’s homicide rate to 103 killings for every 100,000 residents. In neighboring Honduras, it was 64 per 100,000 in 2015. A 2012 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that 77 percent of the murders in Central America were committed with a firearm. Last year in El Salvador, 83 percent of the 6,071 murders were committed with a firearm, according to the government.

The weapons come from various sources. Some are legally registered then filter into the underworld. Others are leftover from the region’s civil wars. And still others are smuggled from the United States.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in 2015, 48 percent of the 4,068 seized weapons Salvadoran authorities sent it for traces were found to have originated in the U.S.

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