Stringent gun-control law goes into effect in Brazil

By Henry Chu
Los Angeles Times

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Now, under a new law hailed by supporters as the most sweeping gun-control measure in South America, only Brazilians with valid reasons — police and security guards, for example — are allowed to carry firearms in public.

Ordinary citizens who own guns either must register their weapons, turn them in or face jail time.

Proponents of the law, which went into effect this month, see it as a badly needed step toward ridding this country of weapons too easily acquired and too often used to kill.

Critics call it a misguided attempt that will do little to take guns out of the hands of drug dealers and other violent criminals who build their private arsenals through a flourishing illegal arms trade.

No one, however, disputes the statistics that have made shooting deaths commonplace in Brazil, where officials say someone is killed by a bullet every 12 minutes — more than 40,000 each year.

By contrast, the United States, which has 100 million more people, recorded about 30,000 gun deaths in 2001, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"In six years, the U.S. lost 56,000 men in Vietnam. We have almost a Vietnam each year in Brazil," said Antonio Rangel Bandeira of Viva Rio. "I show the figures to people in other places and they say, 'Which country is Brazil at war against?' "

The debate over stricter gun controls in Brazil echoes that in the U.S. Gun-control advocates here find themselves up against a similarly established culture of gun possession, partly born of a romanticized rough-and-tumble frontier past in which cowboys, rebels and vigilantes helped expand the country's settlements and borders.

The new law requires background checks for prospective buyers, raises the legal age for gun ownership from 21 to 25, demands that all guns be registered and imposes prison sentences of up to four years for violators.

Anyone with a criminal record will be denied, but critics note that drug traffickers and organized-crime rings get their stockpiles illegally anyway and thus will not be affected.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More nation & world headlines...