Crime Is Cited to Ease Brazil’s Gun Laws
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — For Natalia and Rubens Ortega, the only remaining question is: Glock or Taurus? The couple signed up for a gun-training course at a shooting club in São Paulo after Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right former Army captain, was elected to be Brazil’s next president in October on promises to upend the status quo and fight crime.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s vow to break with Brazil’s restrictive attitude toward weapons and make it easier for “good guys” to own guns was particularly resonant. “We want to get back in practice so we can buy a pistol when it happens,” said Mr. Ortega, who has joined a wave of Brazilians preparing for a relaxing of gun restrictions. “We just can’t decide which one.”
Mr. Bolsonaro’s tough- on- crime stance helped him win election in a country reeling from a record level of violence. Last year there were roughly 175 homicides per day, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety. Mr. Bolsonaro said he would ease firearm laws and give the police more freedom to shoot, despite the police killing 5,144 people in 2017, a 20 percent increase over 2016. “We have to stop this politically correct thing, saying that disarming everyone will make Brazil a better place — it won’t,” he said in a post- election television interview, pointing out that strict regulations have failed to stem the flow of firearms to criminals.
These regulations were created at the turn of the 21st century, when civil society, faced with rising violence, stepped up pressure on the government to register firearms and regulate their use. The Disarmament Statute, approved in 2003, required applicants to be at least 25 years old, have no criminal history, provide proof of a steady job and fixed residence, pass a psychological test and have gun training.
It gave Brazilians two options: They can get a license for a self- defense firearm, which must be stored exclusively at home or at a place of work; or for a sporting weapon, which can be carried to authorized shooting clubs. In the case of a firearm for self- defense, the applicant must also declare why a gun is needed and have that argument approved by the police.
Faced with such an onerous registration process, many gun owners opted to surrender their firearms. The murder rate declined 12 percent in the four years after the statute was approved. But then it started to climb again, setting a record in 2017 of 30.8 per 100,000 people, according to the Brazilian Forum of Public Security, a research organization. (Even Mexico had a lower murder rate of 25 per 100,000 last year.)
Studies show that having more firearms in circulation increases the number of deaths, but “there are no magic solutions,” said Ilona Szabó, of the Igarapé Institute, a research group that focuses on security issues. “We need sustainable measures that make the country safer.”
Despite anger over the public security crisis, most Brazilians — 55 percent, in a poll conducted by Datafolha right before the elections — think civilian gun ownership should be banned, although this is down from 68 percent in 2013.
Luciana Burr, a lawyer from São Paulo, says she has been robbed at gunpoint six times, including being held up in a “flash kidnapping” with her 5-year- old son in the car. They were driven around for two hours while armed teenagers forced them to take cash out of A.T.M.s. Still, she opposes allowing citizens to carry guns.
“I was caught by surprise every single time,” she said, adding, “I don’t want some ‘good citizen’ deciding to step in with a gun. I don’t want someone making that decision for me — the risk is too big.”