Bolsonaro increased number of gun registrations

By Maria Josefina Arce

When his four-year term in office ended on December 31, 2022, Jair Bolsonaro was leaving a Brazil with a larger number of poor and hungry people, but also with a huge number of firearms in private hands, with the consequent threat to life.

A day later, in his inauguration speech, the new president, Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, affirmed that the country did not want or need guns. Brazil, he stressed, needed security, books and education.

And with the hackneyed argument of self-defense, Bolsonaro encouraged the sale of these devices, the import of which has skyrocketed since the retired captain arrived at the Planalto Palace in 2019.

The number of Brazilians registered as hunters, shooters and collectors of firearms tripled in Bolsonaro's government with respect to the total of the previous 15 years.

Thus, in the four years of Bolsonaro's administration alone, the number of registrations jumped to almost 550 thousand, from 171 thousand 431 from 2003 to 2018.

In the Amazon, the presence of these gadgets grew by 219% in the last three years, according to the Igarape Institute, a non-profit organization that operates in the areas of public safety, climate and digitization.

As experts have pointed out, more guns in circulation does not mean greater security, on the contrary, it leads to increased violence and can end up in the wrong hands, such as those of drug traffickers.

There are the high homicide rates. Just a few days ago, for example, in the state of Mato Grosso, two men murdered seven people, among them a 12-year-old girl, for the simple fact of having lost at billiards.

Faced with this situation, the new government of the South American giant has taken a series of measures. Civilians have 60 days to register the firearms in their possession, a decision that seeks to strengthen controls over their circulation.

Those who fail to register their firearms within the deadline will be held accountable for illegal possession of firearms, which may be seized.

He also temporarily suspended the registration of new shooting clubs and schools, which also proliferated in the last four years.

Within hours of assuming his third term, Lula Da Silva began to fulfill one of his main electoral promises, to put a limit to the presence of firearms in society, which only lead to an increase in violence as Brazil has already witnessed during Bolsonaro's controversial government.