Jair Bolsonaro’s latest efforts to make weapons more easily available to Brazilians have generated anger and apprehension, with some calling the measures a threat to the young democracy in the South American country.
Brazil’s pro-arms president announced four presidential decrees aimed at facilitating legal access to weapons on Saturday morning, when the number of coronavirus deaths in the country increased to almost 240,000.
The changes, which went into effect immediately, increase the number of firearms and the amount of ammunition that citizens can legally purchase and make those weapons easier to acquire, depriving the federal police and the army of enforcement of weapons. Hunters can now buy 30 weapons each and snipers up to 60.
“People are excited”, Bolsonaro on Sunday boasted, a former army captain whose trademark greeting from the political movement is a sign of a two-finger gun.
Bolsonaro’s political sons, who are the protagonists of the growing arms movement in Brazil, also celebrated a movement that experts say aims to excite the president’s hardcore base.
“Shooting is a sport. Demonizing him is part of a left-wing dictatorial plan, ”tweeted Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman who is Steve Bannon’s regional representative and usually poses with guns on social media.
Gun control activists and Bolsonaro’s opponents are appalled, warning that relaxation of gun laws was helping organized crime groups expand their arsenals and would make one of the world’s most violent countries even more violent.
Weapon ownership and imports have skyrocketed since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019 and began issuing a succession of decrees – some of which were later suspended – making it easier to buy increasingly powerful weapons, including semi-automatic assault rifles.
Marcelo Freixo, a left-wing deputy, called Bolsonaro’s actions “a threat to democracy”. “Bolsonaro does not want an armed society because he believes that individual rights must be above everything … He wants to undermine our institutions so that you have a society where a coup can be carried out with firearms,” Freixo said, urging citizens to wake up to the threat.
Freixo noted that Brazilian citizens now buy more ammunition than all the country’s police forces combined, putting the state’s monopoly in place in check. “What is happening is extremely serious.”
“I am very concerned because these decrees (…) have already allowed the purchase of an immense amount of weapons and ammunition – and weapons of much larger caliber -,” said Ilona Szabó, a specialist in arms control who runs the Igarapé Institute.
But Szabó said his concerns were about how these weapons could affect Brazil’s democracy, which was restored in 1985 after two decades of military rule, as well as public security.
She feared that the flood of new weapons could fuel US-style radical citizen militias, that Bolsonaro would mobilize for an “anti-democratic adventure” if he lost the next presidential election in 2022. When supporters of Bolsonaro’s political idol, Donald Trump , invaded the Capitol Last month, after his false allegations of electoral fraud, the president of Brazil warned that his country could face something “even worse” in 2022.
“We have a script here that Bolsonaro is following,” warned Szabó. “The risk is too great for the institutions to not immediately retreat and suspend these decrees.”
Political journalist Matheus Leitão expressed similar fears.
“If 30 ‘hunters’ come together, that’s 900 weapons. If there are 30 snipers, there will be 1,800 weapons. The numbers are alarming, ”wrote Leitão in Veja magazine. “How many hunters and snipers does it take to form an armed militia like the one we saw invading the United States Congress? That is the question that people are beginning to ask in Bolsonaro’s Brazil ”.
Research shows that about two-thirds of Brazilians oppose Bolsonaro’s push to make weapons more available, but the president of Brazil has consistently ignored these concerns. After Szabó questioned his new decrees on Twitter, it was blocked by the official account of Bolsonaro.
“I feel that this is a really dangerous time because, unfortunately, the new illiberal leaders in the world undermine democracy inside,” said Szabó. “And it started in Brazil, I am absolutely sure.”