On 13th of March, 2019 Suzano, a municipality in Sao Paulo state, Brazil witnessed something which have been rare – actually used to be, compared with Brazil’s share of political imbalance and violence. Five Students were killed by two former school students of Raul Brasil School, who broke in and open fired. They also killed two employees and injured at least nine other students. They brutally shot the owner of a nearby car rental outlet on their way towards the school, who was later identified as one of the attackers’ uncle.
Although shootings are in the headlines and main stage in United States, Suzano’s tragedy is the seventh attack in Brazil. Brazil has already accumulated similar massacres. Starting from the shooting in the cinema of Morumbi Shopping in 1999 to the most recent in December 2018, when a man invaded a mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Campinas, in Sao Paulo and open fired. There have been 43 and counting with the recent case in Suzano deaths left by these massacres and may increase if proper expand background checks are not performed to prevent firearms from falling into the hands of potentially violent people. Officials suspect that attackers were inspired by the Columbine massacre in the United States – which left 12 students and a professor dead in April, 1999.
As high profile violent crime involving teenagers sweeps in Brazilian society, debates comes in dealing with teenage criminals and gun laws under Bolsonaro’s Government. The age of criminal responsibility is debated to lower down from 18 to16 for which voting is planned later this month. But, just reducing age will not resolve the entire problem of youth’s involvement and attaining weapons for executing such heinous crimes. It is not unheard about the riots and criminal gang rules that prevail in adult prisons. It has also been recorded that trying teenagers as adults in the United States had led to higher levels of re-offending. So, just dumping teenagers with them won’t help improve the entire scenario.
A senator from Sao Paulo suggested that if an armed citizen was assigned inside the school, he could have minimized the effect of the tragedy. Arming regular civilians may reduce the effect, but Instead of beating around the bush, the government must work towards tightening the gun laws. One of the attackers was 17-year-old, not even an adult, possessed all sort of weapons including a 0.38 calibre revolver. The main question here is “How do these kids attain weapons?
President signed a decree making it easier for the citizens to keep a firearm at home at his first month after he took office. Alessandro Molon, the opposition leader in the lower house of Congress, has introduced legislation to terminate Bolsonaro’s decree. Brazil has imposed relatively strict limits on firearms ownership that include penalties for noncompliance. 2003 Disarmament statute includes only people who are above the age limit of 25 who are judged by the federal police with their capability to use it can legally attain a firearm. But, Brazil’s gun control law, however concrete in paper are not yet fully implemented. Firearm are not banned in the country, they remain accessible and the country still suffers from high levels of firearm violence, while small but powerful sections of society continue to profit from the ideologies of a gun culture, leaving behind a trail of blood and injustice. There should be less fire arm availability, strict control over the manufacturers and traders, regulation and policy checks and most important is the involving of public to generate legitimately democratic and effective gun control and to reduce mortality.