The Ministry of Health in Brazil has published recently a study detailing the dead by firearms in the country from 1980 to 2012.
The study focuses on mortality from firearms in Brazil from 1980 to 2012. They are homicides, suicides and accidents, by the action of firearms. It is also studied the incidence of factors such as sex, race / color and ages of the victims of this mortality.
The results of the study are quite eye opening. In the last year of the study Brazil had the highest number of people killed by firearms 42,416 in that year the country had a population of around 199 million. Although the study includes suicides and accidents the overwhelmingly majority were killings. Brazil is one of the very short list of countries were like in the USA the general population can own firearms without many restrictions. Also at this moment deregulation of the little control over the sell and possession of guns enacted in 2003 by Lula is about to be passed as a group of representatives, known as the
bancada de la bala (the bullet bench) is moving a law to liberalize guns.
In 2005 there was a referendum in Brazil that proposed to ban gun ownership; the referendum was defeated by a large majority 65%. The NRA was very active in supporting the groups opposed to the ban and it is now in the deregulation effort and Brazil has its own quite powerful gun lobby linked to the gun industry. The referendum was mandatory and made clear that Brazilians see a need for guns as personal security. The YES was ahead initially but then those in favor of the NO to banning guns make a successful campaign showing the flaws of the legal system and security forces in Brazil.
Right now in Brazil you have to 25 to buy a gun, the gun has to be registered and most people are not allowed to carry them around. Still the country is full of weapons over 17 million of them and nearly half of them are not registered.
The study also found that the victims were increasingly young and black
From 1980 to 2012, the number of gun killings increased by almost 400 per cent but the increase in the shootings among young people rose by 460 per cent.
“In other words, more young people die from firearms despite the initial reduction caused by the approval of the disarmament statute,” Ms Valesan added.
“And the gravity becomes even greater when one observes that, in the majority, the victims of this increase are young black men.”
The greatest increase in shootings was registered in the north of the country with a rise of 135 per cent.
The state with the highest rate of gun deaths was Alagoas on the north-eastern coast, where there were 55 deaths per 100,000.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
Brazil has acute problems of poverty, really bad policing, and sense of lawlessness in many areas out of the main urban centers or in the shanty towns around them and a cultural substratum that has given validity to solving disputes violently. Brazil also has very interesting similarities with the USA the frontier attitude, racial divisions, great wealth and poverty and the prevalence of guns. Those promoting the deregulation law say they are pursuing it so citizens can protect themselves, but it’s hard to understand how that will lower the number of violent gun deads that is at ridiculous levels even compared to other countries washed in guns like the USA.
The rate of deaths in Brazil as a result of firearms was 21.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. This rate, according to UNESCO places Brazil in the 11th position among the ninety countries analyzed, behind countries such as Venezuela, Colombia and Iraq.
http://riotimesonline.com/...
Actually Colombians and Venezuelans are disproportionally represented in the people that are killed by guns in Brazil and the huge porous border is one of the main sources of those illegal weapons, plus the millions of them that were sold before the reforms and not reported. There are many things Brazil could do to fight this spike in gun deads; from fighting the origin of the black market guns, create incentives for those guns to come to light and particularly address the lawlessness in the northern states and poverty all around, but it seems that instead the solution offered by the bancada de la bala and their backers, that will be benefited economically by the
increase in gun and munition sells, will be the one triumphing: Ferro e mais ferro.