U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro revokes order easing gun controls,” Agence France-Presse reports. “Jair Bolsonaro announced the decree in May, enabling a wide range of professions, including truckers, politicians, hunters and even some journalists, to carry weapons.”
So why is he pulling back?
The Supreme Court wants to weigh in on constitutionality. It ought to be a slam dunk for them because the only place that document mentions “weapons” is under “Fundamental Rights and Guarantees,” where it says you can’t have any at public meetings. The good news is, if you’re poor, you have a right to a free death certificate.
Considering Brazil’s restrictive gun laws, anything would be an improvement. The decree the court is finding so unconstitutional would have included:
“Permission for the rural gun-owner with legal possession of a firearm to use the weapon within the perimeter of their own property; Breaking of the monopoly on arms imports in Brazil; Permission for collectors, sport shooters and hunters (CSCs) to be able to travel between home and shooting site with the firearm and its ammunition; Armed Forces Veterans with ten years or more of experience will be entitled to bear firearms; The right to purchase up to 50 cartridges per year will go up to one thousand cartridges per year.”
That was evidently too much for the – how do you say “swamp” in Portuguese?
“[I]t faced a strong opposition, even from governors in states with high rates of violence who argued the order failed to improve security,” the article notes. Sure it did.
And in lieu of real reforms,” Bolsonaro instead published three new decrees that appeared to exclude the most controversial points of the original order, but few details were available.”
Now, per an update in The Rio Times, “the administration realized that the best way to proceed would be to submit a new bill to render the carrying and possession of weapons more flexible.”
There’s a term with plenty of leeway.
As for failing to improve security, those enjoying a monopoly of violence who have failed to improve it themselves would say that. Understand that Brazil is a “commonsense gun safety law” paradise, offering everything our domestic gun-grabbers say they want and then some. So naturally, per The New York Times:
“Brazil has beat its own macabre record for homicides: 63,880 people were murdered across the country in 2017, up 3 percent from the year before, according to a new study.”
It did drop a bit in 2018, but that can’t be attributed to any new “gun laws,” although the powers that be and their hand-wringing useful idiots would have everyone believe that allowing good people who aren’t predators the means of defense will somehow cause murderous chaos to break out — as if it hasn’t already. They also have no answer for why Brazil has an intentional homicide rate of 29.53/100,000, while the United States, where it’s supposedly easier to get a gun than fresh vegetables, comes in at 5.35.
Anybody care to guess what that rate would be if we excluded Democrat-controlled urban areas? How about if we distilled it even further, and limited the population to the 5+ million members of the NRA?
Anybody get the feeling that maybe it’s not the guns that are the problem?
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.