Brasil Loosens Up Gun Ownership Rules

GUNS

Shots Heard Round the World

Brazil leads the world in homicides.

Newly elected President Jair Bolsonaro believes making it easier for Brazilians to own guns would help address the problem.

Recently, he signed legislation that loosened restrictions on gun ownership, though would-be buyers of firearms still must be at least 25 years old, sport a clean criminal record, and pass a psychological exam and a gun club course. The new rules will let people defend themselves, said Bolsonaro.

It’s not clear if Brazilians agree. Polls show that more than 60 percent of them believe firearms should be prohibited, the Associated Press reported. But the South American country’s voters also rejected a ban on making and selling guns in a 2005 referendum.

Brazilians aren’t the only ones who share Americans’ stance about self-defense and the role of guns in violent crime.

Civilian ownership of firearms worldwide increased by almost a third between 2007 and 2017, according to Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based research group.

Berlin student Carolin Matthie, 26, applied for a gun permit after she heard about North African or Arab migrants allegedly assaulting hundreds of German women in Cologne and other cities on New Year’s Eve three years ago. “If I don’t do it now, I will have to wait maybe another half year,” Matthie told the Wall Street Journal.

She represented a trend. Europeans are buying more guns amid a spike in terror attacks, fears over immigration and a rise in gun-toting criminals. Germany’s strict gun control laws might delay Matthie’s purchase. But they haven’t stopped a black market in deadly weapons from thriving on the continent, the Journal added.

American firearms companies have capitalized on the trend, exporting 64 percent more handguns, rifles and shotguns for civilians between 2010 and 2016, according to Small Arms Analytics, another research firm.

Those commercial connections have led the National Rifle Association (NRA) to take positions “that are hard to square with its all-American persona,” wrote Bloomberg. The NRA supported Iran, North Korea, and Syria’s objections to an arms trade treaty and criticized the US government for slapping sanctions on the Russian maker of the AK-47 over the issue of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

Still, the pushback against gun violence is also strong. After a spate of shootings in Toronto last year, Canadians are debating stricter gun control, reported the Atlantic. South Africans are sick and tired of the shootings that mar their daily lives, according to Forbes.

It’s a cycle of violence that seems impossible to stop without at least the threat of more violence. And in Brazil, and elsewhere, scholars say that’s what’s to come.