Bolsonaro moves to arm base
SAO PAULO» Katia Sastre was walking her 7-year-old to class in Suzano, a violent city near Sao Paulo, when she saw a young man draw a pistol on other parents standing by the school’s front door.
Within seconds, she pulled the .38 special she carried in her purse.
The off-duty police officer’s three shots killed the mugger on that morning in May 2018 and kicked off her transformation into a beacon for champions of looser gun control. Security camera footage produced medals, social media star power and a congressional run in the same conservative wave that lifted pro-gun lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro from the fringes to the presidency.
Now a lawmaker herself, she is backing Bolsonaro’s push to deliver a gun to every Brazilian who wants one, and dismisses public security experts’ concerns about the president’s four recently issued gun decrees. They will take effect next month — unless Congress or courts intervene.
“Brazilians want assurances for self-defense because they feel insecure about criminality,” Sastre told The Associated Press, blaming a 2003 disarmament law for heightened violence and more than 65,000 violent deaths in Brazil in 2017. “The guns used in those killings weren’t in the hands of citizens; they came illegally from traffickers and criminals.”
Sastre is in the minority of Brazilians, almost three-quarters of whom want stricter gun laws, according to the most recent poll. Yet the unpopular proposal is among Bolsonaro’s top priorities for deploying his recently replenished political capital, even in Brazil’s worst throes of the pandemic, with about 1,800 people dying per day.
Anti-gun activists, a former defense minister and high-ranking former police officers, including an ex-national public security secretary, warn the decrees will only add to the body count.
The two decrees causing most controversy would boost the number of guns average Brazilians can own — to six, from four currently — and enable them to carry two simultaneously. Policemen, core supporters of the president, could have eight firearms if the decrees stand.
Ilona Szabó, director at the security-focused Igarape Institute in Rio de Janeiro, has pushed back against Bolsonaro’s attempts to get more guns to Brazilians. Nominated to a national security council, she faced a deluge of threats from Bolsonaro devotees and had to flee the country. From abroad, she’s urging lawmakers and the country’s Supreme Court to strike down the measures.
Court justices are expected to rule within weeks on the first of at least 10 challenges to the decrees.
“There is no technical justification for those decrees; it is evident that they make policing harder and could end up favoring criminal organizations,” Szabó said.
The number of deaths from gunshots rose by 6% a year from 1980 to 2003, when the disarmament law passed. After that, the rate fell to 0.9% through 2018, when it was fully implemented, according to government research institute IPEA’s Violence Atlas. That shows fewer guns translates into fewer deaths, Szabó said.
Although homicides increased in the years leading up to 2017, they plunged in 2018 — before any measures to loosen gun control.