RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Under Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, Brazil broke a record for new firearms registered in a single year: 44,181 between January and November 2019, up 24 percent from all of last year.
This is the highest number of permits for possession – that is, to have a gun at home – granted by the Federal Police since 2010, according to unprecedented statistics obtained by GLOBO based on the Access to Information Law (LAI).
The survey concerns only registrations for individuals, excluding, for example, acquisitions of public agencies and security companies and also of CACs (collectors, shooters and hunters), whose registration is made by the Army.
Even without the data for December, the country sold five weapons per hour to ordinary citizens in 2019 – a higher average than in all other analyzed periods.
Year after year, gun registrations have been increasing. In 2018, that number was 35,758, the highest so far – an 8 percent increase over the previous year. The average was four weapons sold per hour.