Brazil Gun Buyback Exceeds Hopes

RIO DE JANEIRO —  Every time he hit the road as a traveling salesman, Francisco Pereira packed two things: clothes and heat.

It was just a simple handgun, small and cheap. “He was afraid something would happen,” said his wife, Palmyra Goncalves Pereira. “He felt safer with it.”

Thankfully, her husband retired without having to fire a shot. But now Palmyra, 72, sees her grandchildren staring at the gun in fascination, and she worries they might come to harm.

She and her husband are eager to get rid of the firearm. In exchange, they will receive not only peace of mind but a modest payment under a buyback program in effect since July, part of an ambitious gun-control law in one of South America’s most violent countries.

Already, the buyback has exceeded official expectations, with more weapons turned in halfway through the six-month program than had been forecast for its entire duration. Officials have collected nearly 130,000 guns, and there is talk of extending the program’s deadline.

Complaints, too, have arisen. Gun-control advocates say federal police, who are in charge of administering the buyback, have resisted the help of civic organizations and scorned other measures to make the program even more effective.

Despite the law’s early success, the pulse of violence in Brazil persists. The number of firearms handed over is minuscule compared with the total believed to be in circulation, and daily headlines here in Rio throb with accounts of fatal street robberies, shootouts between criminals and police and wanton bloodletting among feuding drug gangs that have no intention of surrendering their stockpiles.

“The government says there are 8 million to 20 million guns in the country. The 130,000 is a drop in the ocean,” said Leonardo Arruda, spokesman for the National Assn. of Gun Owners and Vendors, which opposes the new law. “Violence will continue to increase.”

Gun deaths have already reached staggering levels in Brazil. Someone is killed by a bullet every 12 minutes, adding up to more than 40,000 such deaths a year -- many more than occur in the U.S., which has 100 million more people.

The new legislation imposes strict criteria on gun ownership, establishes a unified national gun registry, forbids most ordinary citizens to carry firearms in public and calls for a referendum a year from now on whether to ban gun sales entirely, a measure that would probably pass by a large majority if the vote were held today.

What the law does not do, critics note, is disarm criminals.

Arruda of the gun association said that those who have turned in their guns under the buyback program have tended to be older residents rather than the young males who make up the vast majority of gun users and victims.

The experience of Viva Rio, an influential nonprofit group and one of the primary backers of the law, bears out that point. Most of the firearms collected by the organization have been brought in by people over 50, said Antonio Rangel Bandeira, the head of Viva Rio’s disarmament project.

“We have a problem here,” Bandeira said. “We are not touching the youth.”

A mass-media ad campaign hopes to address that crucial population, including humorous TV spots made by famous actresses questioning the virility of men who feel the need to pack a gun.

For Bandeira, a larger problem is reluctance by federal police to allow more civic groups to get involved in collecting weapons. The federal police, who are chronically understaffed, say that ordinary citizens are not equipped to handle the guns safely. But many Brazilians have little faith in their law enforcement agencies, some of which have been known to divert arms shipments to drug dealers for cash.

“Viva Rio, in two months, collected 2,500 guns by itself. Eighty percent of the people who came here said, ‘If Viva Rio weren’t receiving the guns, we wouldn’t have gone to the police station,’ ” Bandeira said. “They don’t trust the police. Most of the guns -- 70% of the guns here -- were not registered. They are illegal. People in this situation are afraid to go to the police, even with the amnesty.

“The second reason is that they don’t trust that [the police] will destroy the guns,” Bandeira said. “They think they’ll sell the guns on the black market.”

Viva Rio makes a point of disabling each weapon in the presence of the person who brought it in. That appeals to Daniel Pessanha, a bank teller who intends to hand over a .22-caliber pistol he acquired years ago in a swap for his watch.

Pessanha, 47, said he felt more comfortable going to Viva Rio, whose friendlier approach was not so nerve-racking as approaching the police.