SAO PAULO (AP) – Katia Sastre was driving her 7-year-old son to class in Suzano, a violent city near Sao Paulo, when he saw a young man pull out a gun at other parents who were at the front door of the school.
Within seconds, he pulled out the .38 special he was carrying in his bag.
The three shots of the off-duty police officer killed the killer that morning in May 2018 and began his transformation into a beacon for the weaker gun control advocates. Security camera footage produced medals, star power on social media and a turnout in Congress in the same conservative wave that lifted pro-gun lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro from the margins of the presidency.
Right now in parliament, she supports Bolsonaro’s push to deliver a weapon to all Brazilians who want it and dismisses the concerns of public safety experts about the president’s four recently issued arms decrees. They will come into force next month, unless Congress or the courts intervene.
“Brazilians want guarantees of self-defense because they feel insecure about crime,” Sastre told The Associated Press, accusing the 2003 disarmament law of intensive violence and more than 65,000 violent deaths in Brazil in 2017. ” The weapons used in these murders were not in the hands of the citizens; they came illegally from traffickers and criminals ”.
Sastre is a minority of Brazilians, nearly three-quarters of whom want stricter gun laws, according to the latest poll. However, the unpopular proposal is one of Bolsonaro’s top priorities for deploying his recently laid-back political capital, even in Brazil’s worst pandemic period, with some 1,800 people dying a day.
Anti-arms activists, a former defense minister and former high-ranking police officers, including a former national public security secretary, warn that the decrees will only be added to the number of bodies.
The two decrees that cause the most controversy would increase the number of weapons that Brazilians can have on average (to six, currently four) and allow them to carry two simultaneously. Police, basic supporters of the president, could have eight firearms if the decrees are upheld.
Ilona Szabó, director of the security-focused Igarape Institute in Rio de Janeiro, has rejected Bolsonaro’s attempts to get more weapons from Brazilians. Appointed to a national security council, she faced a deluge of threats from Bolsonaro devotees and had to flee the country. From abroad, he urges lawmakers and the country’s Supreme Court to overturn the measures.
The courts are expected to rule in a few weeks on the first of at least 10 challenges to the decrees.
“There is no technical justification for these decrees; it is clear that they are making the police tougher and may end up favoring criminal organizations, ”Szabó said.
The number of shooting deaths increased by 6% in the year between 1980 and 2003, when the disarmament law was passed. After that, the rate dropped to 0.9% until 2018, when it was fully implemented, according to the government research institute’s IPEA Violence Atlas. This shows that fewer weapons translate into fewer deaths, Szabó said.
And while homicides increased in the years leading up to 2017, they fell in 2018, before taking steps to loosen gun control.
Bolsonaro’s position in favor of firearms was a trademark of his seven terms as a legislator. In July 2018, he surprised opponents by teaching a young child to make the hand sign that represented his presidential campaign.
When he took office in January 2019, a person could have two weapons, but had to undergo a costly process of criminal background check, employment, psychological and physical fitness, and also write a statement explaining the need for a weapon.
The May 2019 decrees allowed rural landowners to carry weapons through their properties, increase annual ammunition allocations, and allow registered shooters and hunters to transport weapons from their homes to distribution camps.
Last month, Igarape and the Sou da Paz Institute, which investigates violence, said there were nearly 1.2 million legal weapons in the hands of Brazilians, 65% more than the month before the start of the mandate. Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain who expresses nostalgia for Brazil’s three decades of military rule, has said he wants to arm citizens to prevent a dictatorship from being imposed. He has suggested that armed citizens could counter restrictions on local government activity during the pandemic.
“An armed population will end this game of everyone who needs to stay home,” the president said on Christmas night.
The decrees also allow local councils of psychologists to grant permission to members of the firing range to possess weapons, rather than experts chosen by Brazil’s federal police. And they strive for army control over sales of various caliber bullets, making them more difficult to track, and increasing annual ammunition allocations to five.
These are welcome prospects for people like Eduardo Barzana, president of a shooting club in Americana, a country town in the state of Sao Paulo. Before a training session, as he defied the semi-automatic assault rifles and prepared the goggles, he explained why he applauds Bolsonaro’s movements to loosen the controls.
“Weapons are like cell phones; it’s the person behind it that matters, ”said Barzana. “What the government is doing is benefiting our sport and giving average citizens the right to defend themselves.”
Former Secretary of Public Security José Vicente da Silva acknowledges that the decrees would help responsible owners, but says they will also facilitate the fall of weapons into the wrong hands. A month after Sastre was appointed legislator, students at the school where he attended were shot; the assailants used weapons purchased online.
“No one needs six or eight weapons to protect themselves and there is no obvious reason to give so many weapons to shooters and hunters,” said da Silva, who retired from Sao Paulo state police after three decades of service. . “The decrees make it almost impossible for the police to track down bullets or weapons. If this goes ahead, we will have accumulations of weapons, many of which were bought by organized crime. ”
Some analysts have expressed fear that the January riot at the U.S. Capitol could inspire an armed revolt of Bolsonaro supporters in the event that he does not win a second term in next year’s election.
The son of Bolsonaro lawmaker Eduardo, an armed rights advocate and former federal police officer, visited the White House on the eve of the riot. He later denied any involvement in the invasion.
On March 8, Eduardo Bolsonaro told the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo during a visit to Jerusalem that, if riots had been organized in the United States, they could have taken the Capitol and made their demands heard and have “a minimum of warlike power ”to avoid victims at his side. In 2018, he said it would only take two soldiers to close the Supreme Court.
Statements such as those provoked by Szabó d’Igarape and other analysts warn that the risks to democracy in Brazil are higher than in the US.
“This rhetoric of politicizing the issue, with the president saying he will arm citizens against closures or election fraud, is the Trump model,” Szabo said. “We saw what happened in the invasion of the Capitol, with deaths. It could have been worse. “
In the United States, arms sales hit an all-time high in January after the riot, and continued the record-breaking increase that began when the pandemic consolidated. Arms sales often increase during election years amid concerns that a new administration may change gun laws. U.S. President Joe Biden has backed gun control measures such as a ban on “assault weapons.”
In Brazil, both the Speaker of the House and the Speaker of the Senate won their positions last month with the support of Bolsonaro. Congress analysts say neither of them is unlikely to cross the president on an issue their base considers so cherished. The opposition is not strong enough to whip up the votes needed to overthrow the decrees.
On Sunday, caravans of Bolsonaro supporters drove through the streets of major cities. Images that went viral on social media showed they had guns near the car windows.
“Here we are operating beyond public safety; this is the realm of politics, which is really serious, “said Raul Jungmann, a former minister of defense and public security.” Assembling populations is always done in the service of coups, massacres, genocides and dictatorships. ”