Hands off our guns

last updated 8 January 2015

Rio de Janeiro

Voting in a nationwide referendum this week, Brazilians rejected a proposed ban on the sale of guns to the public. Until a few weeks ago, polls indicated that the measure was likely to pass by a wide margin. But in the weeks before the vote, pro-gun groups were granted an equal share of free ads on national television. The gun lobby, using material supplied by the National Rifle Association and translated into Portuguese, appealed to widespread mistrust of the country’s police, asking citizens whether they felt protected. “The answer is a violent no,” said political scientist David Fleischer of the University of Brasilia. Brazil has 40,000 gun deaths a year, 25 percent more than the U.S., even though Brazil has 100 million fewer citizens.