Giving Brazilians More Access To Guns Won't Reduce Violent Deaths, Evidence Shows

[Judi Lynn]

Bolsonaro promised during his campaign to reform Brazilian law to allow citizens to have broader access to guns for self-defense
Nov.9.2018 12:51PM

Fernanda Mena
Daniel Cerqueira, an economist at the Instituto for Applied Economic Research, in Brasília, is the country's foremost researcher on the impact on deaths by gun violence caused by the restrictions imposed by 15-year-old Brazilian gun law.

According to his research, the law spared more than 2,000 lives from 2004 to 2007. "We saw that gun-related homicides fell from 2003, and only rose again because of new allowances in the law," he said.

It's a similar result than the one found in "More Guns, More Crime," a study by Stanford University economist Mark Duggan that deconstructed two of the biggest arguments in favor of gun ownership.

The first argument that was owning a weapon discourages criminals didn't hold water when he evaluated local laws that allowed civilians to carry guns didn't cause any reductions in the incidence of violent crimes. "It shows that the civilians decided against carrying their guns with them, or the criminals' perception didn't change," he said.

More:
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2018/11/giving-brazilians-more-access-to-guns-wont-reduce-violent-deaths-evidence-shows.shtml