(PNS reporting from BAJA NALGAS) The narcotraficante shoot-outs in this border town typically take 30 or 40 seconds. A discerning listener might notice — amid the screams, the pop-pop-pop of semiautomatic pistol fire and the distinctive rat-a-tat-tat of submachineguns — the jingle-jangle-jingle of spent brass cartridges hitting the street.

When the smoke clears, survivors, if any, are taken to the hospital and the dead are carted to the morgue. A city crew hoses off the blood and the police let traffic through.

And then the kids come — a pack of boys, tween scavengers. They methodically retrieve the brass shells left on the street and take them back to Guinchimes del Sud, a local manufacturer of wind chimes, where the spent 9mm pistol and AK-47 submachinegun ammunition “brass” is recycled into musical metal sculptures that get shipped to breeze buffs in America.

But as demand for wind chimes on the U.S. side of the Rio Culero improves, Guinchimes’ path to future success is blowing in the wind.

Mas…Drug cartel shoot-out recycling means big business for one border town