Brazil - Whether to ban gun sales

[FWiedner]

Brazilians to vote whether to ban gun sales nationwide

RIO DE JANEIRO – A rap group interrupts the TV evening news with a rapid-fire tirade about the need to protect family and friends. No gangsta rap here – they want Brazil to ban the sale of guns. Then a young woman tells viewers that banning guns won’t stop violence, and that she won’t give up her constitutional right to bear arms. If Brazil outlaws guns, she warns, only outlaws will have guns.

Latin America’s largest country is debating: Should the sale of guns and ammunition be prohibited in Brazil?

On Oct. 23, Brazilians will give their answer. More than 100 million Brazilians are expected to vote, in a referendum the government calls the world’s biggest. Brazilians as young as 16 can vote, and voting is compulsory for citizens from 18 to 70.

And the issue has touched a nerve in this country, where gun violence is a fact of daily life.

‘‘People here use guns so often, for any reason,” said Dr. Zilda Arns, a founder of the Catholic Church-linked Children’s Pastoral and a campaigner for abolition. ‘‘They regret it later, but then it’s too late.”
Unofficial polls show a majority of Brazilians favor abolition, and statistics indicate they have reason to be alarmed. About 39,000 people in Brazil are killed by guns each year, or about four an hour. That’s roughly equal to all the casualties of the Vietnam War – every 18 months.

According to UNESCO, Brazil ranks second in deaths by guns, with 21.72 per 100,000 people a year. Venezuela proportionately has more, with 34.30 per 100,000, but Brazil is tops in ab-solute numbers.

More than one in every 11 Brazilians has a gun, says the Institute of Religious Studies or ISER, an independent research group based in Rio. That’s about 17 million guns in a nation of 183 million. Today, many Brazilians use guns because of rising urban crime. Heavily armed drug gangs control Rio’s shantytowns, or favelas, and regularly engage in gunfights with out-manned and outgunned police.

Part of the sprawling Mare shantytown has been dubbed the Gaza Strip because of the constant shooting, and the Red Line, the road to Rio’s international airport and a major city avenue by day, at night becomes a no man’s land, with drivers avoiding random gunfire from nearby favelas.
Abolitionists points to successful examples of disarmament in other countries. In Australia, where the right to bear guns became a ‘‘privilege” a decade ago, the number of deaths from firearms was cut in half over five years.

Japan, which has a similar law, registers only about 30 gun-related killings a year, fewer than in an average weekend in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city.

But the pro-gun lobby insists the referendum is a violation of citizens’ rights. And their hard-hitting campaign is winning more support than abolitionists expected.

http://www.thedailyjournalonline.com/article.asp?ArticleId=200017&CategoryId=12395

*FW Note:

What do you think?

If the honest citizens of Brazil give up their guns, will the crime "go away"?

 :roll: