SAO PAULO (AP) – Katia Sastre was walking with her 7-year-old to class in Suzano, a violent city near Sao Paulo, when she saw a young man pull a gun on other parents standing at the school’s front door.
Within seconds, she pulls the .38 special she carries in her purse.
The police officer’s three shots killed the killer on the morning of May 2018 and kicked off her conversion into a beacon for champions of looser gun control. Security camera footage yielded medals, stardom on social media and a congressional match in the same conservative wave that lifted pro-gun lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro from the fringe to the presidency.
She is now a legislator and also supports Bolsonaro’s uprising to deliver a gun to every Brazilian who wants it, rejecting the concerns of public safety experts over the president’s four recent arms decisions. They will take effect next month, unless Congress or courts intervene.
“Brazilians want assurances for self-defense because they feel insecure about crime,” Sastre told The Associated Press. He blamed a 2003 disarmament law for increased violence and more than 65,000 violent deaths in Brazil in 2017. ‘The weapons used in those killings were in the hands of civilians; they come illegally from traders and criminals. ”
According to the most recent poll, Sastre is in the minority of Brazilians, of whom nearly three-quarters want stricter gun laws.. Yet the unpopular proposal is one of Bolsonaro’s top priorities for the deployment of its recently replenished political capital, even in Brazil’s worst pandemic, with about 1,800 people dying each day.
Anti-gun activists, a former defense minister and high-ranking former police officers, including a former national secretary of public safety, warn that the orders will only contribute to the body mass.
The two controversies that are causing the most controversy will increase the number of rifles that Brazilians can own to six, from four at present – and allow them to carry two at a time. Policemen, core supporters of the president, could have eight firearms if the regulations apply.
Ilona Szabó, director of the security-focused Igarape Institute in Rio de Janeiro, pushed back against Bolsonaro’s efforts to get more guns for Brazilians. Nominated for a National Security Council, she faced a barrage of threats from Bolsonaro devotees and had to flee the country. From abroad, she is urging lawmakers and the country’s high court to halt the measures.
Court judges are expected to rule on the first of at least ten challenges to the decision within a few weeks.
‘There is no technical justification for those orders; “It is clear that they are making policing more difficult and can ultimately benefit criminal organizations,” Szabó said.
The number of gunshot deaths rose by 6% a year from 1980 to 2003 when the Disarmament Act was passed. Thereafter, the rate dropped to 0.9% until 2018 when it was fully implemented, according to the government’s research institute IPEA’s Violence Atlas. This shows that fewer guns translate into fewer deaths, Szabó said.
And although killings increased in the years to 2017, they plunged into 2018 – before any measures were taken to weaken gun control.
Bolsonaro’s gun position was a trademark of his seven terms as legislator. In July 2018, he shocked opponents by teaching a toddler how to make the fingergun that came to represent his presidential campaign.
When he took office in January 2019, a person could own two guns, but he had to submit to a difficult process that checked the criminal record, work, psychological and physical fitness, and also write a statement that the need for set out a weapon.
Decisions of May 2019 allowed rural landowners to carry guns across their properties, increase annual ammunition allowances, and have registered shooters and hunters transport weapons from their homes to ranges.
Last month, Igarape and the Sou da Paz Institute, which investigates violence, said there were nearly 1.2 million legal weapons in Brazil’s hands, an increase of 65% from the month before Bolsonaro’s term began.
Bolsonaro, a former army captain who expresses nostalgia for Brazil’s three decades of military rule, said he wanted to arm civilians to prevent a dictatorship from taking hold. He suggested that armed citizens could oppose the local government’s restrictions on activities during the pandemic.
” An armed population will end this game of all who have to stay home, ” the president said on Christmas Eve.
The orders also empower local councils of psychologists to give shooting range members permission to possess weapons, rather than experts selected by the Federal Police of Brazil. And they deprive the military of control over sales of multiple caliber bullets, making it harder to locate, and increasing annual ammunition allowances by as much as fivefold.
These are welcome prospects for people like Eduardo Barzana, president of a shooting club in Americana, a rural town in Sao Paulo. While opening semi-automatic assault rifles and preparing his goggles, he explained before a training session why he applauded Bolsonaro’s move to loosen the ministry.
“Guns are like cellphones; it is the person behind them who matters, ”said Barzana. “What the government is doing is benefiting our sport and giving ordinary citizens the right to defend themselves.”
Former Secretary of Public Safety José Vicente da Silva acknowledges that the orders will help responsible owners, but says it will also ease guns into the wrong hands. One month after Sastre was sworn in as a lawmaker, students from the school she once attended were targeted in a shooting; the attackers used rifles purchased online.
“No one needs six or eight rifles for protection, and there is no clear reason to give so many rifles to shooters and hunters,” da Silva said. He retired after three decades of service with the state police of Sao Paulo. ‘The orders make it almost impossible for the police to locate bullets or weapons. If this continues, we will have weapons stockpiles, many of which will be bought by organized crime. ”
Some analysts have expressed fears that the riot at the US Capitol in January could inspire an armed uprising of Bolsonaro supporters if he does not win a second term in next year’s election.
Bolsonaro’s son of lawmaker Eduardo, a fellow supporter of gun rights and former federal police officer, visited the White House before the riot. He later denied any connection to the raid.
On March 8, during a visit to Jerusalem, Eduardo Bolsonaro told the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo that if rioters were organized in the USA, they would be able to take the Capitol and make their demands heard, and that they would minimum of bellicose power ”to avoid casualties on their part. In 2018, he said it would only take two soldiers to close the Supreme Court.
Statements such as the rapid Igarape’s Szabó and other analysts warn that the risks to Brazil’s democracy are higher than in the US.
“This rhetoric of politicizing the issue, with the president saying he will arm citizens against locks or election fraud, is the Trump model,” Szabo said. ‘We saw what happened during the Capitol invasion, with deaths. It could have been worse. ”
In the U.S., gun sales reached a historic high in January after the riots, and the record-breaking record that began when the pandemic took hold continued. Gun sales often rise during election years amid concerns that a new administration could change gun laws. US President Joe Biden has backed gun control measures such as a ban on ‘assault weapons’.
In Brazil, the speaker of the House as well as the president of the Senate won their positions last month with the support of Bolsonaro. Congress analysts say it is unlikely the president will cross the issue over a case that loves its base so much. The opposition is not strong enough to sweep the votes needed to destroy the ordinances.
Caravans of Bolsonaro supporters drove through the streets of major cities on Sunday. On social media, photos showed some guns holding up near their car windows.
“We work here outside public safety; this is the realm of politics that is really serious, ”said Raul Jungmann, a former defense and public safety minister. “Arming populations is always done to coups, massacres, genocides and dictatorships.”