In a global first, Brazilians voting on banning gun sales

The debate over gun control is entering uncharted waters in Brazil, where for the first time anywhere in the world, a proposed ban on gun sales will be put directly to voters.

Sunday's referendum follows an ambitious gun buyback scheme last year that prompted people to turn in more than 420,000 weapons ranging from antique rifles to semiautomatic assault weapons. Gun homicides fell by 8 percent the following year, marking the first drop in 13 years, according to Brazil's Health Ministry.

That's a welcome development in a country that saw nearly four times as many gun deaths as the United States in 2003, despite Brazil's smaller population.

But like the US, the gun culture is deeply ingrained here, as is a wariness to relinquish individual rights. By portraying the ban as an erosion of liberty and a blow to the ability of the law-abiding to defend themselves, opponents of the ban have gained momentum with the help of a US gun-rights group worried about the precedent a ban would set.

More than 70 percent of those polled in August said they would vote for the ban, but results released last week showed that those planning to vote no, nao in Portuguese, had shot up - especially among the well-off and best educated. Less than two weeks before the final vote, Brazil's well-known polling firm Ibope released a poll saying the Naos were leading 49 percent to 45 percent.

While governments have banned gun sales before, putting the question directly to voters is new. The idea originated in 2003 when Brazil's Congress passed a bill called the Disarmament Statute. The same bill that prompted the buyback program a few months later prohibited weapons sales to all but law enforcement, hunters, and collectors, and forced those allowed to buy guns to take a series of tests and pay hefty registration rates. Brazil's gun lobby, which boasts two of the world's biggest weapons suppliers in Taurus and ammunition maker CBC, reacted by forcing lawmakers to agree to a referendum on the issue.

The Sim, or yes, campaign does not claim that the ban would disarm the country's criminals or that the drug-related warfare that ravages poor communities will end. Rather, activists argue that fewer guns means fewer deaths and that the vast majority of Brazil's122 million people will be safer. Already, more than 3,000 lives have been saved since the Disarmament Statute was passed, says Raul Jungmann, a Sim campaigner.

"In just two years the campaign for disarmament and the ban on carrying weapons has saved the lives of thousands of people who would have died for inane reasons like road rage, quarrels with neighbors, marital fights, etc," he says.

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