Wave of violence sweeps over ‘Alpha World City’ in spite of restrictive gun laws

A rising wave of violence” has resulted in 140 deaths in Sao Paulo over the past two weeks, Associated Press reported yesterday

Citing Sao Paulo’s Public Safety Department, the report states killings “sharply increased in September” with 144 homicides, tallying the total for the first nine months of the year at 982, including “90 police officers, most of them gunned down while off duty.”

Reports of terrible violence are hardly new, as a Gun Right Examiner column from April 2011 about a mass shooting in Rio de Janeiro reported, along with the telling fact that “Although Brazil has 110 million fewer citizens than the United States, and more restrictive gun laws, there are 50 percent more gun deaths; other sources indicate that homicide rates due to guns are approximately four times higher than the rate in the United States.”

As for those gun laws, there’s a telling workaround with similarities to what’s been noted in “restrictive” Mexico:

Other guns used to commit crimes come from police and military arsenals, either stolen or sold by corrupt soldiers and officers.

The fact is, Brazil could be looked at as a laboratory of sorts to help determine the effectiveness of citizen disarmament proposals being made for the United States under the guise of “common sense” measures that promise to reduce the violence. A summary of Brazilian gun laws provided by GunPolicy.org, no neutral party in the debate but one that “With its partners and contributors… promotes the public health model of firearm injury prevention, as adopted by the United Nations Programme of Action on illicit small arms,” and is a committed proponent of global norms on government monopolies of violence

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