By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 24 2005 (IPS)

The resounding defeat of a proposed ban on the sale of guns and ammunition in a referendum Sunday reflected one of the most sudden shifts in public opinion ever recorded in Brazil, and some fear that it could usher in more conservative, authoritarian security policies that trample human and social rights.

The firearms ban was voted down by almost two thirds – 64 percent – of voters, an even more sizeable majority than was predicted by polls conducted just before the referendum, which pointed to a 59 percent victory for the “no” side.

The overwhelming defeat of the gun sales ban is even more surprising in view of the fact that up until September, surveys had indicated that a large majority of respondents planned to vote in favour of the measure, with polls at the end of the month reflecting support of over 70 percent.

“It was the most sudden and drastic shift in public opinion I’ve ever seen,” said Ricardo Guedes, director of the Sensus polling firm, who has close to 17 years experience in this area.

In the 1980s and 1990s, there were electoral campaigns in Brazil in which candidates who were practically unknown or enjoyed minimal support at the outset eventually emerged as the winners, but these cases did not reflect as abrupt a change as seen in Sunday’s referendum, Guedes told IPS.

It is generally assumed that the shift in public opinion was the result of the three weeks of free radio and television advertising time allotted to the two congressional blocs representing the two sides in the debate: the Front for a Gun Free Brazil, which supported the ban, and the Front for the Right to Legitimate Self-Defence, which opposed it.

Opponents of the ban succeeded in winning over votes with arguments based on the government’s inability to ensure public security, and the subsequent need for people to have the right to defend themselves with firearms, concluded Guedes, a political scientist by training.

Those who supported the ban, on the other hand, stressed that ending the legal sale of firearms and ammunition would help prevent gun-related deaths resulting from interpersonal disputes, accidents and suicides, in addition to cutting off one of the sources of firearms for criminals.

Ultimately, however, the population’s growing concern over the escalation in violent crime in recent years, particularly in the large cities, played into the hands of those touting the “right” of average citizens to bear arms.

The victory of the “no” vote reflects widespread dissatisfaction with the government’s current public security policies, and support for arguments stressing the “right to legitimate self defence” and the “freedom” to choose whether or not to buy a gun.

In rural areas and isolated communities, particularly in the Amazon region, opposition to the ban was overwhelming.

“The local population was frightened by the possibility of not being able to buy guns and ammunition,” Leoncio Menezes of the non-governmental environmental group SOS Amazonas commented to IPS.

“Everyone here depends on guns for their survival,” since hunting is an indispensable source of food, explained Menezes, who works in the Alto Rio Juruá valley in Acre, the westernmost state in Brazil, bordering on Peru.

Acre, along with Roraima, another Amazon jungle state, and Rio Grande do Sul in the south, were the three states in which over 80 percent of the population voted against the proposed gun ban.

Support for the ban was higher, with close to 45 percent of votes, in a number of states in the northeast, Brazil’s poorest region. “Yes” votes accounted for the majority in only a handful of cities, the most important of which was Diadema, located in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area.

The victory of the pro-ban forces in Diadema – by a mere 0.44 percent – was the result of the experience of this city of 383,000 people, which had the highest murder rate in the state of Sao Paulo until 1999. That year, however, a series of measures were adopted, such as a prohibition on bars remaining open all night, which succeeded in cutting the number of homicides by 76 percent.

In Brazil’s two most densely populated and urbanised states, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, the “no” vote won out with close to 60 percent of the ballots on average.

Sunday’s referendum was held as a means of ratifying a provision of the disarmament law passed in late 2003 to ban the legal commerce of firearms and ammunition. The prohibition was put to a vote by the public when it proved impossible to gain congressional support for it.

However, the defeat of the government-promoted ban could be used to challenge the other provisions of the law, which places severe restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms by civilians.

The National Association of Firearm Owners and Dealers (ANPCA), for example, has called on the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the law, which they accuse of violating the right to legitimate self-defence, while stifling commercial activity.

The legal firearms trade has already experienced a sharp decline, as the number of shops selling guns and ammunition has shrunk from 1,200 in 1997 to only 300 today, ANPCA public relations director Leonardo Arruda told IPS.

The 2003 law restricts authorisation to carry guns in public to individuals who need to do so as part of their job or for survival, such as police officers, security guards and hunters.

It also establishes stricter requirements for purchasing guns, requiring buyers to be over 25 years of age, to have a clean criminal record, and to undergo technical and psychological aptitude tests.

Pro-disarmament activists now fear that the victory of the anti-gun ban forces will serve as encouragement to those who support more conservative, authoritarian security policies, like the adoption of the death penalty or life imprisonment. In Brazil, the maximum jail sentence is currently 30 years.

For instance, the vice president of the Front for the Right to Legitimate Self-Defence, lawmaker Luiz Antonio Fleury, has proposed another referendum to lower the age at which adolescents can be tried as adults from 18 to 16.

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