- Title: Bolsonaro's gun laws arm Brazil's brazen bank thieves
- Date: 21st September 2022
- Summary: SAO PAULO, BRAZIL (SEPTEMBER 20, 2022) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Portuguese) SOU DA PAZ INSTITUTE (I AM THE PEACE INSTITUTE) DIRECTOR, BRUNO LANGEANI, SAYING: "Instead of having a federal government working to help the police and making it difficult for criminals to access weapons, we have just the opposite. We have a federal government creating new options and cheaper option
- Embargoed: 5th October 2022 11:02
- Keywords: Brazil Guns President Jair Bolsonaro crime violence weapons
- Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, BRAZIL
- City: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, BRAZIL
- Country: Brazil
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,South America / Central America
- Reuters ID: LVA009672020092022RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Shortly before dawn in late June 2019, a heavily armed crew of bank robbers rammed a truck into the Brazilian city of Uberaba's main Banco do Brasil branch. They left the building several hours later with around $5 million dollars in cash.
The thieves were part of a new class of stick-up artists, known as "novo cangaco" gangs, terrorizing Brazil's interior. Using assault rifles and explosives to turn rural towns into war zones, the specialized crews have netted an astonishing $120 million since emerging in 2015, think tank Alpha Bravo Brasil says.
In a related article, Reuters tracked how laws pushed by President Jair Bolsonaro make it easier for gangsters to obtain assault rifles like those used in Uberaba.
Prosecutors attribute some of the "novo cangaco" raids to the First Capital Command (PCC), Brazil's most powerful gang. The PCC has deep roots around Uberaba, a wealthy cattle-farming city in Minas Gerais state. The 2019 hit, which involved over two dozen gangsters, was masterminded by a PCC boss sentenced to nearly 150 years in prison for the robbery.
The presence of a group of alleged bank thieves highlights what Federal Police and public security experts say is an inevitable consequence of Bolsonaro's gun liberalizations: the criminal use of Brazil's fast-growing stock of legal weapons.
There is mounting evidence that legitimately acquired high-caliber weapons are leaking onto the black market.
While the fragmented structure of Brazil's security forces makes it difficult to tally how many such weapons have appeared at crime scenes, security experts told Reuters that an increasing number of legally bought firearms are being used to commit crimes across the continent-sized nation.
Many of those have reached the most violent criminals in Brazil, the country with the world's highest number of murders.
Bolsonaro, a nationalist former soldier, has made it easier for Brazilians to bulk-buy firearms by registering with the army as hunters, marksmen, or collectors, known as "CACs." With his encouragement, nearly 700,000 Brazilians have now been accredited as CACs, up almost 500% since 2018.
Bolsonaro says those weapons are being bought by "good" Brazilians, helping to reduce the murder rate, which has fallen steadily since before he took office, from 27 per 100,000 in 2017 to 19 last year. Experts dispute his theory, warning there is a strong long-term link between gun deaths and the number of firearms in circulation.
In July, Reuters reported that Brazil's Federal Police disapproved of Bolsonaro's gun policies, arguing they would put more weapons in the hands of criminals.
There are now signs those fears are becoming a reality.
"This problem has increased a lot because now, with this possibility of buying a lot of rifles, you have an incentive with the infiltration of organized crime putting a straw buyer with no criminal record who buy these weapons and pass them on to crime," said Bruno Langeani, director of Sou Da Paz Institute (I Am The Peace Institute).
Bolsonaro's office did not respond to a request for comment. The Federal Police directed questions to the Army, which grants CAC permits. It, too, did not respond.
(Production: Leonardo Benassatto, Lais Morais, Liamar Ramos) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2022. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None