According to the text of the decree, still being badyzed, interested persons may have up to six months maximum. two weapons at home. The actual need for an armament automatically includes rural residents, the owners or legal guardians of commercial establishments, as well as public servants exercising functions with police power.
In the case of residences where children, adolescents or persons with mental disabilities live, the preliminary text provides for the obligation for the owner of the weapon to dispose of a safe. The decree will maintain other conditions for obtaining possession, such as the minimum age of 25 years and proof of the technical and psychological ability to handle weapons.
In 13 states, more than 90% of the population lives in cities directly affected by the new legislation. Rio de Janeiro is part of this group, which has undergone a federal intervention in public security in 2018, in addition to Bahia, Pernambuco and Ceará, which have suffered a wave of attacks launched by criminal factions in recent days.
The standard will also facilitate access to firearms in 39 of the 41 largest Brazilian cities – only Santo André and São Bernardo do Campo in the São Paulo metropolitan area are left behind. Only in this metropolis live more than 60 million people.
In less populated cities, less than half the population of cities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants meets this criterion. However, the decree opens the possibility of obtaining possession of weapons also in these localities, since it ends with the proof of the actual need for all residents of rural areas.
After a meeting with Bolsonaro on Thursday morning, São Paulo's governor, João Doria (PSDB), said that he was supporting the reduction of arms possession in the country.
– I am in favor. It looks like he's leaving tomorrow (Friday), "said the governor.
A violation may facilitate possession of the ball throughout Brazil.
The decree contains more offenses, so that more people have easy access to weapons. If the criterion used by the federal government is that of homicide rates of states rather than municipalities, the entire country would be included, according to data compiled in the 2018 Violence Yearbook.
In 2017, the homicide rate in Brazil was 30.8 deaths per 100,000 population. Even São Paulo – a state with 10.7 deaths per 100 000 inhabitants, the smallest in the country – falls within the parameters of the decree.
According to Melina Risso, program director at the Igarapé Institute, the new rules on the possession of weapons will have negative consequences on safety because they go against the studies on the subject :
– The first question is what decree goes against scientific evidence. The more weapons are in circulation, the more crimes there are.
Melina also points out the lack of information on the number of applications for possession of weapons accepted and refused in recent years:
– We do not know how many applications were refused or why.
In 2018, the federal police granted, among the new requests and revalidations, 258,427 records of possession of a weapon for the civilian population in Brazil – 48,330 were new registrations and 210,097 were revalidations.
Bene Barbosa, president of the NGO Viva Viva Brasil, believes that the decree does not solve all the problems of the Statute of Disarmament, but it is positive:
– This is already an advance because it shows an intention to change. At least, this is an objective criterion, because until now we had subjective criteria for possession.
