Lula da Silva’s government cancels Bolsonaro’s decrees and restricts access to weapons

Brazilian President Lula da Silva signed decrees this Friday in Brasilia that overturn previous measures taken by his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, that made the public’s access to weapons more flexible, including large-caliber and military weapons. The decrees, signed at a solemn ceremony in Brasilia, drastically reduce the number of weapons that every citizen can now acquire, re-prohibit the use of military weapons by civilians and renew the obligation to prove the real need to acquire weapons.

In the case of self-defence, for example, the number of weapons that each person can have has been reduced from the six allowed by Bolsonaro to two, while for hunters it has been reduced from 30 to 15, and for shooters it has dropped sharply due to the exaggeration that each person can have up to 60, to just 4 under the new rule. The amount of ammunition has also been drastically reduced: every ordinary citizen allowed to own a shotgun can now only buy 200 rounds per year, instead of the 1,000 that Bolsonaro allowed, hunters can no longer buy up to 5,000 rounds per year for each weapon and can now only buy 1,000, and professional shooters have also had their ability to buy ammunition significantly reduced, depending on the number of sporting events they are proven to have participated in.

Long weapons of great power and high lethality, such as battle rifles, which Jair Bolsonaro allowed any citizen, were again used exclusively by the military and public security forces. Ordinary citizens were also prohibited from using the two automatic pistols most commonly purchased during the Bolsonaro period, 9mm and .40.

From now on, anyone who wants to own a firearm will have to prove to the authorities that they really need to carry a weapon, and will also have to prove their suitability and ability to use their weapon, while the digital self-declaration that the former president authorized is no longer valid. In another development of the new rules, shooting clubs, which have exploded in number under Jair Bolsonaro’s rule, now have stricter rules of operation, including not being able to operate 24 hours a day.

At the ceremony, the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Flavio Dino, said that the new rules are now only valid for those who want to acquire weapons, and no one will be confiscated the weapons they bought during Bolsonaro’s rule (about a million), because, he added, when these weapons were acquired, the law allowed the purchase. So what the government is going to do to try to reduce the number of weapons held by civilians is to launch a new disarmament program by buying weapons from anyone who wants them back, adding that there is already an initial amount of 18 million euros for this.