On 17 July a bicameral congressional committee unanimously approved a bill introducing drastic curbs on gun ownership, as a first step towards a complete ban on private handgun ownership by 2005. This is a breakthrough: more than 50 pieces of draft legislation restricting gun ownership ran into dead ends in congress over the past decade, largely due to the lobbying efforts of the gun manufacturers (led by Taurus, a strong contributor to the campaign funds of congressional candidates).
The provisions
The draft 'disarmament' law brings together features from a number of the initiatives blocked since 1997. Chief among them are:
-The minimum age limit for gun ownership is raised from 18 to 25. The applicant will have to undergo training in the safe use of guns and pass a psychological test.
-Gun registration passes from state to federal jurisdiction.
-There will be an amnesty for illegal guns, sweetened by compensation for the firearms surrendered.
-Bearing guns in public places will be banned; infringement will be punished with imprisonment.
-A referendum on an outright ban on private gun ownership is to be held in 2005 [a recent survey by Sensus shows 63.6% of respondents in favour of such a ban].
The problem
Brazil has one of the highest homicide rates in the world: 26 per 100,000. The rate rose sharply in the biggest cities: to 54.2 per 100,000 in Rio, and 50.7 per 100,000 in São Paulo. Nationwide, the homicide rate among young people in the 19-25 bracket is 150 per 100,000. As a point of comparison, in the US rates range from 9 to 11 per 100,000. Seen from another angle, over the past decade almost 270,000 Brazilians have been murdered.
Guns play an important role in this. Between 1979 and 2000, deaths caused by firearms have more than trebled; the WHO reports that this has overtaken car accidents as the main cause of violent deaths. According to one police estimate, there may be about 8m guns in private hands in Brazil, of which only 5m are legally registered. The promoter of the new gun law, congressman Luis Eduardo Greenhalgh, says that in São Paulo there are about 1.5m guns in circulation, of which only 1,180 are registered.
Most of the illegal guns are smuggled in from Paraguay ? but the bulk of these are actually of Brazilian manufacture, legally exported and then sent back. The efficacy of restrictions on gun ownership is called into question by many who note that criminals are unlikely to apply for registration, and that the new rules do nothing to curb a very profitable gunrunning trade.
Statistics are deployed on both sides of the argument. Police figures show that 95% of guns used in crimes are illegally held. However, as pointed out by the sociologist Antônio Rangel Bandeira, of Viva Rio, a civic organisation that campaigns for gun control, of all guns seized by police at crime scenes, 36% were originally bought legally - though most were later sold on illegally, or stolen, which made them illegally held guns at the time the crime was committed. He points out, also, that the transit from legally to illegally owned takes place on a grand scale: in one year in Rio, 10,000 guns legally bought by private security firms simply 'disappeared'. A telling detail: privately employed security guards outnumber the police in Rio.
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