Jair Bolsonaro’s latest attempts to make weapons more readily available to Brazilians have sparked anger and concern by some who call the movements a threat to the South American country’s young democracy.
Brazil’s pro-gun president announced four presidential decrees on Saturday morning to facilitate legal access to weapons, as the country’s death toll from the coronavirus soared to nearly 240,000.
The changes, which took effect immediately, increase the number of firearms and the amount of ammunition that civilians can legally purchase and make it easier to acquire such weapons, thereby reducing federal police and military control over gun possession. Hunters can now buy 30 weapons each and target shooters up to 60.
“The people are pumped,” boasted Bolsonaro, a former army captain whose trademark of the political movement is a two-fingered gun board.
Bolsonaro’s politician sons, who are the leading figures of Brazil’s burgeoning arms movement, also celebrated a move that experts say is designed to tickle the president’s hardcore base.
‘Shooting is a sport. Demonstrating it is part of a dictatorial left plan, ”tweeted Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman who is Steve Bannon’s regional representative and often poses with guns on social media.
The gun control campaigners and Bolsonaro opponents are shocked and warn that his relaxation of gun laws helped organized crime groups expand their arsenal and make one of the world’s most violent countries even more violent.
Gun ownership and imports have skyrocketed since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, and began issuing a series of decrees – some of which were later suspended – making it easier to buy increasingly powerful weapons, including semi-automatic assault rifles.
Marcelo Freixo, a leftist congressman, called Bolsonaro’s actions “a threat to democracy.” “Bolsonaro doesn’t want an armed society because he believes that individual rights should come above everything … He wants to undermine our institutions so that you have a society where a coup can be carried out with weapons,” Freixo said, urging citizens to wake up. be for the threat.
Freixo noted how Brazilian citizens now bought more ammunition than all the country’s police forces put together, suppressing the state’s monopoly on violence. “What is happening is extremely serious.”
“I am very concerned because these decrees … have already allowed an enormous amount of weapons and ammunition – and much higher caliber cannons – to be purchased,” said Ilona Szabó, a gun control specialist who heads the Igarapé Institute. .
But Szabó said she was concerned about the potential impact of those weapons on democracy in Brazil, which was restored in 1985 after two decades of military rule, and public security.
She feared the flood of new weapons could fuel radical American-style civilian militias that could mobilize Bolsonaro for an “ anti-democratic adventure ” if he lost the next presidential election in 2022. When supporters of Bolsonaro’s political idol, Donald Trump, stormed the Capitol Building last month, the Brazilian president warned, following his false claims about electoral fraud, that his country could face something “even worse” in 2022.
“We have a script here that follows Bolsonaro,” warned Szabó. “The risk is too great for the institutions not to immediately push back and suspend these decrees.”
Political journalist Matheus Leitão expressed similar fears.
‘If 30′ hunters’ get together, that’s 900 guns. If it’s 30 marksmen, that’s 1,800 rifles. The numbers are alarming, ”Leitão wrote in Veja magazine. How many hunters and markers does it take to assemble an armed militia, like the one we saw invade the US Congress? That is the question people are starting to ask in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. “
Polls show that about two-thirds of Brazilians oppose Bolsonaro’s attempt to make more weapons available, but Brazil’s president has consistently ignored these concerns. After Szabó questioned his new decrees on Twitter, she was blocked by Bolsonaro’s official account.
“I feel this is a really dangerous moment because unfortunately the world’s new illiberal leaders are undermining democracy from within,” said Szabó. “And that started in Brazil, I am absolutely sure.”