Jair Bolsonaro’s latest attempts to make guns more readily available to Brazilians have provoked anger and fear, and some call the moves a threat to young democracy in the South American country.
Brazil’s pro-gun president on Saturday morning announced four presidential orders to facilitate legal access to weapons, as the death toll in the country’s coronavirus has risen to nearly 240,000.
The changes, which took effect immediately, increase the number of firearms and the amount of ammunition that citizens can legally buy and more easily obtain such weapons, facilitating the federal police and military oversight of gun ownership. Hunters can now buy 30 rifles each and sport shooters up to 60.
“The people are being pumped,” Bolsonaro, a former army captain whose trademark salute is a two-fingered gun sign, boasted Sunday.
Bolsonaro’s politicians, who are at the forefront of Brazil’s emerging gun movement, have also taken a step that experts say is designed to tickle the president’s hardcore base.
“Shooting is a sport. Demonstrating it is part of a dictatorial left-wing plan, ‘tweeted Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman who is Steve Bannon’s regional representative and regularly poses with guns on social media.
Fighters for gun control and opponents of Bolsonaro are shocked and warn that the relaxation of gun laws will help organized crime groups expand their arsenals and make one of the world’s most violent countries even more violent.
Gun ownership and imports have skyrocketed since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019 and began issuing a series of orders – some of which were later suspended – making it easier to buy more and more powerful weapons, including semi-automatic assault rifles.
Marcelo Freixo, a left-wing congressman, calls Bolsonaro’s actions a threat to democracy. “Bolsonaro does not want an armed society because he believes that individual rights should be above all … He wants to undermine our institutions so that you have a society where a coup d’etat can be carried out with guns,” he said. Freixo said. citizens urged to wake up to the threat.
Freixo noted how Brazilian citizens now bought more ammunition than all the country’s police forces put together, curbing the state’s monopoly on power. “What’s happening is extremely serious.”
“I am very concerned because these orders could already buy a large quantity of rifles and ammunition and much higher caliber rifles,” said Ilona Szabó, a gun control specialist who runs the Igarapé Institute.
But Szabó said her concern about how the weapons could affect the democracy of Brazil, which was restored in 1985 after two decades of military rule as well as public security.
She feared the flood of new weapons could feed radical American civilian forces that would mobilize Bolsonaro for an ‘anti-democratic adventure’ if he lost the next 2022 presidential election. When supporters of Bolsonaro’s political idol, Donald Trump, stormed the Capitol last month after his false allegations of electoral fraud, the president of Brazil warned that his country could experience something “even worse” in 2022.
“We have a text here that follows Bolsonaro,” Szabó warned. “The risk is too great for the institutions not to immediately push back and suspend these orders.”
Political journalist Matheus Leitão has expressed similar fears.
‘When 30 hunters gather, it’s 900 guns. If it’s 30 sport shooters, it’s going to be 1800 guns. The numbers are worrying, ”Leitão wrote in Veja magazine. ‘How many hunters and shooters are needed to put together an armed militia like the one we saw invading the US Congress? This is the question that people in Brazil are starting to ask in Bolsonaro. ”
Polls show that about two-thirds of Brazilians resist the fight against Bolsonaro to make guns available, but the Brazilian president has consistently ignored the concerns. After Szabó questioned his new orders on Twitter, she was blocked by Bolsonaro’s official account.
“I feel this is a very dangerous moment, because unfortunately the new illiberal leaders of the world are undermining democracy from within,” Szabó said. “And it started in Brazil, I’m absolutely sure of that.”