BRASÍLIA, Brazil: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has signed an order to tighten gun controls so as to check a surge in firearm ownership in the country.
According to BBC News, under Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s far-right predecessor, there was an almost seven-fold rise in registered owners. Under the new law, limits will be placed on stockpiles of guns and ammunition, while certain weapons, including nine millimetre handguns, will be prohibited.
President Lula had promised gun control during his campaign. He attributed a wave of political violence during 2022’s presidential election to looser gun control.
“We will continue to fight for fewer weapons in our country. Only the police and the army must be well-armed,” Lula said while introducing the new stricter laws.
The announcement followed several recent school shootings in a country that logged over five murders per hour on average during last year, according to an NGO, the Public Security Forum.
According to the 2023 Brazilian Yearbook of Public Security, the country has around 800,000 registered gun owners, up from less than 120,000 in 2018 when Bolsonaro was elected.
The country’s constitution gives no right to bear arms. But under an executive decree passed by former president Bolsonaro in 2019, the citizens were entitled to own up to four guns, while others were granted permission to carry loaded firearms in public under certain conditions.
The decree also increased the amount of ammunition people could buy from 50 to 5,000 cartridges for permitted weapons and up to 1,000 cartridges for use in restricted weapons.
The new law will bring a registered hunter granted permission to own six weapons instead of the previous 30 including up to 15 restricted firearms.
“It is one thing for a citizen to have a gun at home for protection and assurance … but we cannot allow there to be arsenals of weapons in people’s hands,” Lula said in his speech.
Supervision of civilian weapons is also being shifted from the army to the country’s federal police after criticism of weak oversight.
Gun owners who bought their weapons during Bolsonaro’s tenure will not be asked to give them up, but a buyback programme could start soon.
Former president Bolsonaro is of the view that guns make the country safer, pointing to a lower murder rate during his time in office. Bolsonaro had been barred from running for office for eight years after on the charges of abusing his power ahead of 2022’s presidential vote.
The bitterly fought election went into a run-off on 30 October and was won by a narrow margin by Lula. But Bolsonaro never publicly acknowledged his defeat and left Brazil for Florida two days before Lula was sworn in as president.
