Lupara

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For the Italian city, see Lupara (commune).

Lupara is an Italian word used to refer to a side-by-side sawn-off shotgun, with external hammers for each barrel and two triggers, often homemade, and traditionally associated to Cosa Nostra, the Italian organised crime group dominant in Sicily, who uses it for vendettas, defense, and hunting. The word 'lupara' means literally 'wolf-shot', reflecting its lethal power and history of use in Mafia killings. Its one of the oldest Italian weapons originating in Sicily, these guns were also used by the mafioso to protect themselves from Mussolini's army when he decided to break the mafioso network in Sicily

When used in crime, the barrels of a lupara are cut short illegally to facilitate the shotgun being hidden under a coat or in a small space, but when used out in the field for hunting or protecting flocks of sheep, the longer legal barrels are kept as they are.

From the word lupara, it originates the Italian expression lupara bianca (white lupara) which is used especially by journalists to refer to a mafia-style murder in which the victim's body is deliberately hidden. The word was popularised by the author Mario Puzo in his bestselling novel The Godfather.