SAO PAULO — Jonathan Schmidt just made the deadline, arriving at Federal Police headquarters in the center of Rio de Janeiro with a travel bag carrying a golden pistol and seven rifles, one peeking out of the zipper.
“I’m in love with guns,” said Schmidt. “I’d have over 2,000 if the government allowed.”
He had already registered his firearms with the army, as required by law for sport shooters like him, but experts have cast doubt on the reliability of its database, and said lax oversight has allowed such guns to fall into criminal hands. Schmidt was adding his guns to the police registry Wednesday on the final day to comply with a decree by Brazil’s new left-wing president — or face confiscation.
Over four years in office, former President Jair Bolsonaro tried to convert a country with few weapons into one where firearm ownership and lack of regulation meant personal freedom.
Now, his successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been moving to undo Bolsonaro’s pro-gun policies, and that started with requiring gun owners to register their weapons with police. After initial resistance, he started seeing success.
But more than 6,000 restricted-use guns previously registered with the army, and which include assault rifles, were not presented to police by the May 3 deadline, Justice Minister Flávio Dino told reporters Thursday. Those are likely to have been diverted to criminals, and are now targets for investigation and potential seizure, he said.
In Brazil’s last gun-control campaign, in 2003, Brazilians were invited to turn in their guns and receive a symbolic payment from the state. It boasted a high level of participation.
In the eyes of right-wing Bolsonaro, however, the disarmament statute was a historic blunder. Echoing aspects of American conservativism, he was the first Brazilian presidential candidate to campaign on a pro-gun platform, saying “good citizens” are entitled to firearms to protect their families and assets. He altered the rules for how much ammunition one can possess and access to restricted guns. He repeatedly claimed that “an armed populace will never be enslaved.”
Instituto Sou da Paz, a non-profit that monitors public security, estimates that the number of guns in civilian hands nearly tripled — to 2.2 million in a country of 214 million people — under Bolsonaro. It remains far lower than in the United States and Brazil has no constitutional right to bear arms.
On his first day in office, Lula issued a decree requiring gun owners to register their weapons with the Federal Police and the original deadline was delayed by a month. At Rio’s Federal Police headquarters, officers have registered guns belonging to as many as 50 people per day.
But people had been wary.
“There was a lot of concern primarily at the beginning when they arrived here. They believed we were going to confiscate their guns,” Marcelo Daemon, the head of the Rio police’s department overseeing arms control, said in an interview in his office. “A lot of fake news circulated on social media and people came here with fear.”
Gun advocates mostly came around, though some had encouraged their followers to do so only begrudgingly.
