The debate on weapons in Brazil is revived

A terrible massacre in a bar in Sinop, in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, which occurred on Tuesday due to a fight during a game of billiards has revived in Brazil the firearms liberalization debatestrongly defended by the previous government of Jair Messiah Bolsonaro and now blocked by the president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Seven people died in the massacre, including a 12-year-old girl. The only inmate – the other assailant died in a shootout with police – is Edgar Ricardi de Oliveirainscribed in the so-called “CAC registration“, which recognizes the carrying of weapons for civilian use in three categories: collectors, sports shooters (“atiradores”, in Portuguese) and hunters, hence the acronym CAC. Inevitably, controversy erupts now as many wonder how Ricardi de Oliveira, with a history of domestic violence, was allowed to legally keep guns in his home. This doubt is more legitimate if we take into account that a 2019 amendment to the law against femicide known as “Maria Penha” establishes that if the aggressor has a license for weapons, the authorities are obliged to confiscate them.

The case of Ricardi de Oliveira is unfortunately not an isolated case. Dozens of assassinations or attempted assassinations in recent months have shown all the dangerousness of the public policy carried out by the previous Bolsonaro government, totally favorable to the liberalization of armaments and based on the failed American model, where shootings are the agenda. , frequently causing drama in schools or public places. In the Federal District (DF), the state in which the capital Brasilia is located, nearly half of the weapons used in feminicides are legally registered, according to the DF’s Public Security Secretariat.

Under Bolsonaro’s decrees, shooting range officials could own up to 60 weapons. Among them, 30 could be for restricted use, such as rifles. Around 1,600 arms and ammunition stores were opened in Brazil during the four years of the previous government. The number of ordinary citizens with firearms licenses increased from 350,000 in 2018 to 1.2 million in 2022according to data from the Sou da Paz Institute, a non-governmental organization that has been monitoring arms proliferation in Brazil for years. That’s a growth of 259%.

Mato Grosso, the state where the massacre took place, was the second region after the Amazon to see an exponential growth in the number of arms licenses, around 626%, from just over 8,000 in 2018 to 65,300 in 2022. In total, the number of weapons for private use are around 3 million, according to the Igarapé Institute, another non-governmental organization that deals with public security. In 2018, weapons owned by civilians were only 1.3 million.

To this must be added a whole illicit market from which Brazilian organized criminal groups feed, which have also been experimenting for some time with 3D printers to assemble parts of weapons and for their maintenance. With regard to the issue of weapons in the hands of organized crime, Lula’s administration has so far not disclosed any plans, further inflaming the political debate. According to the Fogo Cruzado Institute, an NGO that studies violence in cities, in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro in January 2023, shootings increased by 29% compared to the previous year, demonstrating the urgency of policies effective urban security.

Among the measures taken by the new Lula government, there is the end of the dangerous trend towards the liberalization of weapons for civilian use, by a decree signed by the president on the very day of his inauguration. The text provides for the suspension of CAC registrations, limits the total number of weapons and ammunition authorized, and suspends any new license for shooting ranges. It also requires the re-registration of weapons acquired since May 2019. The effects of the decree were immediate. Compared to January 2022, the number of weapons purchased and registered for civilian use fell by 71% immediately.

However, the debate is lively, since there is a veritable bench of arms in Congress, a group of hardened deputies and senators who supported the Bolsonaro government and now oppose Lula’s measures. Since January 17, 34 deputies and two senators have presented 17 bills or legislative decrees aimed at restoring the liberalization of armaments.

The same opposition is also registered at the state government level. Among those most vocal against Lula’s decree is the former president’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro, who qualified the text of unconstitutional “because it exceeds the limits of the function of the president and can create unemployment”. According to Bolsonaro’s son, “the arms and ammunition industry alone generates 70,000 direct and indirect jobs, invoices more than 6 billion reais a year ($1,150 million), exports 2.7 billion reais (520 million dollars) and generates more than 1.9 billion reais”. in tax payments ($360 million).

The idea of ​​self-defense as the basis of the arms liberalization policy is also the workhorse of the country’s most elected deputy, Nicholas Ferreira, 26, of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL). The question now is what power this political bloc will have in Congress to achieve its goal of restoring arms liberalization in Brazil.

Theoretically, the legislature can approve an executive order in favor of weapons restoration, but by law it would then have to go through the Federal Supreme Court (STF), which has the power to overturn it. Recently, the decision of one of the STF ministers, Gilmar Mendesshowed how the Supreme Court today is oriented to put “a halt to the dizzying trend of access to arms rules in Brazilas the judge himself said.

For Mendès, Lula’s decree is not unconstitutional, quite the contrary, and therefore the STF will keep it in force. In Congress, therefore, a difficult match will be played out in the months to come between the government and the opposition, which will have to raise other criticisms in addition to that of “unconstitutionality”. An important part of national security is at stake which, as many international examples show, does not benefit from the liberalization of armaments.

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