Demolishing the damn things...

One of the essential features of The PeaceWorks Project is that the firearms used for the sculpture are absolutely incapable of ever functioning as weapons again.  You don't want people somehow prying an operational Saturday Night Special off the side of a PeaceWork (something that would be virtually impossible, regardless) and using it.  So the first rule is to render each gun permanently inoperable.

Do you ever listen to Ray LaMontagne?  There's a great couple of lines in his song "Jolene" ...

A man needs something he can hold onto
A nine-pound hammer or a woman like you
Either one of them things will do
Jolene

Not sure how Jolene feels about being objectified like this, but a nine-pound hammer figures prominently in the dismantling of the guns.  Revolvers are easy.  You hold the weapon in one hand and your nine-pound hammer in the other (this is a slight simplification) and you have at it, demolishing first the hammer mechanism then the cylinder.  As if that wasn't enough, you force epoxy resin into the rear end of the barrel.   Once that stuff dries, this weapon will never fire anything again.  Semi-automatic pistols are more or less the same thing.  Remove the slide, beat the hell out of the firing mechanism, then fill the chamber with epoxy.  Rifles need a larger hammer, since the objective is to forcibly separate the barrel from the stock, then fill it with epoxy.

All of this is done in cooperation with the local Police Department.  Then, and only then, the sculpting begins.