Brazil’s Bolsonaro moves to expand gun rights

The Brazilian gun debate is déjà vu all over again — but in Brazil, Congress could limit expanded access.

“Sometimes we see little children put their fingers in blenders, turn them on, and they lose a finger. Are we going to ban blenders? No.”

With this gruesome analogy, Onyx Lorenzoni, the chief of staff to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, dismissed concerns about Bolsonaro’s January 15 executive decree loosening gun control in Brazil. The move indicated that the new rightist president, who only took office at the beginning of the month, will seek to follow through rapidly on his campaign promises to expand gun rights. As Lorenzoni’s vehement defense of blenders indicates, the move has given rise to heated controversy reminiscent of the public gun debate in the United States.

But the Brazilian debate has a very different legislative context. The decree reinterprets the country’s 2003 Statute of Disarmament passed during the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Together with a 2004 presidential decree, the 2003 law had substantially restricted access to firearms. Disarmament campaigns in 2004 also led to the voluntary surrender of firearms in 2,000 locations throughout Brazil.

Bolsonaro’s new decree partially reverses those policies to make it much easier for Brazilians to have guns in their homes. For one thing, it increases the maximum number of guns allowed per person in one’s home to four and extends gun licenses from five to 10 years. Most importantly, it dramatically reinterprets the existing federal requirement that says gun permit applicants need to go to the federal police to prove they have an “effective necessity” for a gun in their home or workplace.

Until now, officers reviewed applications to determine “effective necessity” on a case-by-case basis. But now, anyone who lives in either a rural area or a state with a homicide rate of 10 in 10,000 will automatically qualify. This was fancy sleight of hand that actually refers to everyone in Brazil; all states in Brazil have a homicide rate of 10 in 10,000 or more, with some reaching 60 per 10,000 or higher. And the states with homicide rates that might dip below 10 per 10,000 someday tend to be — you guessed it — rural. So either condition will pretty much always apply.

Now, instead of applicants having to prove that they need a gun, police will have to show that they don’t. Some restrictions are still maintained. In accordance with previous legislation, firearm owners must be 25 or older, have a fixed residence, have no criminal history, and prove technical and psychological competence to own a firearm (although intelligence, prison, police, and military personnel will automatically be approved). In addition, those who have a child, teenager, or person with disabilities living at home must declare that they will keep their firearms in a safe or locked location (but it is not clear if or how this will be enforced).

This decree is low-hanging fruit for Bolsonaro, who focused a large part of his campaign on Brazil’s security problems. The country registered 63,880 intentional violent deaths in 2017, yielding a homicide rate of higher than 30 deaths per 100,000 people (compared to five per 100,000 in the US). The fragile security situation led the federal government to send the military police into Rio de Janeiro in February 2018 to handle security, with predictable human rights impacts including police killings and abuse.

Though Bolsonaro’s January 15 decree delighted gun enthusiasts and gun manufacturers alike, it was only a down payment on his campaign promises. Some pro-gun activists were disappointed that Bolsonaro had not entirely dispensed with the federal police’s role in approving gun ownership. And the president still hopes to expand the right to carry firearms in public.

The problem for Bolsonaro is that further broadening the rights to possess and bear firearms would most likely entail getting congressional approval to repeal or replace the 2003 Statute of Disarmament. By contrast, his January 15 decree expanded rights with a simple stroke of a pen — simply by changing how the administration interpreted the two little words “effective necessity.”

When Brazil’s new legislative session starts on February 1, Bolsonaro will be eager to make firearm rights a top priority. He could well do that — Brazilian presidents have strong formal powers to set the legislative agenda. But guns will have to compete with other administration priorities. Perhaps most importantly, the business community and Finance Minister Paulo Guedes have made it clear that pension reform has to happen before anything else. And even the January 15 presidential decree may go beyond what Bolsonaro’s advisors wanted. For instance, the popular Justice and Public Security Minister Sérgio Moro had advocated for only allowing two firearms per person, rather than four.

Ultimately, it’s far from clear that Bolsonaro will be able to muster the votes to expand gun rights in Congress. Though he currently enjoys reasonable levels of popularity and the newly elected legislature will mark a sharp turn to the right, it also will contain 30 parties. Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party will have to operate within a large and diverse coalition, as it only holds 11 percent of the seats in the lower house. The prior legislature took up similar legislation that failed to advance very far.

Public opinion is also not looking too favorable for Bolsonaro’s plans. According to a survey from the polling firm Datafolha in December 2018, 61 percent of Brazilians support a ban on the possession of firearms, up from 55 percent in October 2018.

But even if gun rights expand no further, the January 15 decree will likely have wide-ranging impacts on Brazilian society. Experts warn that the decree could worsen violence in Brazil instead of helping solve it. More guns within the home will likely exacerbate domestic violence and increase rates of femicide. The decree may also increase the risk of wealthy rural landowners killing poor residents when they clash over land rights. And in high-poverty urban areas, a rising number of guns in circulation could also fuel crime; although many illegal arms are already in circulation in such neighborhoods, many arms used by criminals are stolen weapons that had originally been purchased legally.

It’s difficult to know how this will play out over the rest of Bolsonaro’s term. That said, we can be sure that this is only the first shot to be fired in what will be a prolonged battle over security in Brazil. And the casualties might be far more than fingers.