Federal Gun Control Program Pays $60 to $180 Per Weapon
BRASILIA - Between May and early September, the government collected 22,200 firearms across the country, according to a report issued by the National Campaign for Disarmament released Monday by the Ministry of Justice.
Handguns made up the majority of the weapons gathered by the program during the last four months with 10,828. Also collected were 8,000 other small arms and 3,734 large arms such as rifles, carbines, machine guns and sub-machine guns.
The number of weapons collected during the four months of campaigning is 20 times greater than the total seized by the Federal Police from January through April this year, before the launch of the anonymous buyback program. The states of Sao Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco and Minas Gerais top the list of the states with the greatest number of arms collected during the campaign. Twenty-one states have joined a call to increase the number of collection points.
The Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Luis Paulo Barreto, said the disarmament campaign was an effective policy for public safety. “It's a campaign that is characterized by anonymity, quick compensation and immediate destruction of the weapons, so we can make sure that they will not return to the streets to be used for crime,” he said. Since the first disarmament campaign in 2004/05, more than 570,000 weapons have been withdrawn from circulation and destroyed according to Barreto.
Launched on May 6th and modeled after successful programs in the United States, the National Disarmament Campaign pays between U.S. $60 and $180 for each weapon turned in and guarantees anonymity to the seller.
According to wikipedia, all firearms in Brazil are required to be registered with the state. The minimum age for ownership is 25 and it is generally illegal to carry a gun outside a residence. The total number of firearms in Brazil is thought to be about 17 million with 9 million of those being unregistered.
In 2005, a national referendum was held in Brazil that would have outlawed private ownership of handguns. The referendum was defeated with 65% voting no.
Brazilian online news source: terra.com.br
Read also: More Articles from Brazil Dispatch
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