Brazil’s recently elected leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is pushing new gun control regulations on the country’s gun owners, requiring all of them to register each of their firearms with the police.
The massive gun registration program comes after his predecessor, former President Jair Bolsonaro, campaigned on a pro-gun platform and, once in office, overturned the rules on private gun ownership. He also changed the rules on how much ammunition a person could have and eased access to small caliber weapons.
Bolsonaro has also repeatedly said that “an armed population will never be enslaved,” according to the Associated Press.
Now, Lula is working to expose Bolsonaro’s pro-gun policies.
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A gun owner holds a gun as a police officer registers his firearms with the federal police at the deadline given by the Brazilian government for gun registration with the Federal Police National Weapons System, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil , Wednesday 3 April 2023 . (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
The government said registering in person could help determine precisely how many guns there are in the country and potentially how many are no longer with their original owners or may have fallen into criminal hands.
On January 1, which was Lula’s first day in office, he issued a decree requiring gun owners to register their guns with the federal police. The original deadline has been postponed to May 3.
The decree provided for the seizure of unregistered weapons within the deadline.
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A federal police officer, right, receives a handgun from a gun owner to register within the deadline set by the Brazilian government for gun registration at the Federal Police National Weapons System, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday. April 2023. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Even gun owners who have not registered their firearms with the federal police could be in legal danger if they are found with an unregistered firearm.
The registration, while hesitantly received, required membership. Officials at the federal police headquarters in Rio said up to 50 people a day registered their weapons. Many did so reluctantly, they said.
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Marcelo Daemon, the head of the Rio police department that oversees arms control, told The AP there was “a lot of concern especially in the beginning, when they got here.”
“They believed we were going to confiscate their weapons,” he continued.
Mauricio Miranda takes shooting lessons at a club in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday, October 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Some politicians have also contributed to this reluctance.
Gun registration in Brazil is nothing new as its military previously collected and maintained gun ownership data for sport shooters, collectors and hunters, known as CAC (Portuguese for “Colecionadores, Atiradores desportivos e Caçadores”).
Army data shows an increase of 762,365 firearms purchased by CACs since May 7, 2019, when Bolsonaro promoted gun ownership.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro points his fingers as if they were guns as he addresses the opening National Meeting of Mayors in Brasilia, Brazil on Tuesday, April 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
The number of privately owned guns nearly tripled under Bolsonaro, according to the Instituto Sou da Paz, a non-profit public safety organization.
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Carolina Ricardo, executive director of the nonprofit, said additional gun control measures the government could take include new rules that limit the ammunition and guns each person can own. Lula may also hope to consolidate gun information within Army and federal police databases.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
