U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Brazil can be rescued after being turned into a Covid-stricken global outcast by its ‘psychopath’ president Jair Bolsonaro, the politician best placed to defeat him in next year’s presidential election has insisted,” a story The Guardian reports. “Brazil’s former leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left no doubt he was planning a finale to a dramatic political career.”
Bolsonaro and his government are being blamed for their response to the virus and the resulting deaths. And that may be what it takes to return confirmed leftist and Workers Party founding member Lula, “who has positioned himself as a reliable, moderate and upbeat alternative to Bolsonaro’s ‘moronic’ extremism,” to power.
A “leftist” is now a “moderate”? And a return to power?
Lula is a former president of Brazil. “In 2017, he was convicted for bribery after accepting a seaside apartment from a construction company in exchange for lucrative government contracts,” DW Akademie reported. “The following year, another court found him guilty of corruption and he was sentenced to a total of 26 years on charges of taking bribes.
The conviction was voided by Brazil’s Supreme Court on an eight -three vote not because he was innocent, but on a technicality “that the lower federal court where Lula was tried lacked jurisdiction.”
So naturally, being a well-heeled socialist, the masses are behind Lula because of what it will be in his power to take and then give, and Bolsonaro supporters are being painted by the media as “far-right” extremists. And naturally, being a socialist with power, Lula rejects the notion that the right to keep and bear arms is the most egalitarian power-sharing arrangement ever devised and instead is all in for citizen disarmament and a government monopoly of violence.
“Brazil’s president Monday signed sweeping changes to the nation’s gun-control laws ending years of legislative wrangling,” Big News Network reported in 2003. “Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made official a bill passed by the Congress earlier this month, making it illegal for civilians to carry firearms.”
Per the Taipei Times, Lula signed laws to “prohibit possession of firearms in public places such as sports arenas, churches, government buildings and schools … raise the minimum age for gun ownership from 18 years to 25 years and require gun owners to register their weapons with both the Defense Ministry and the Justice Ministry.”
That was followed by a nationwide referendum proposing:
“The sale of firearms and ammunition is prohibited in the entire national territory, except to those entities provided in article 6 of this Law.”
“Brazilian gun ban vote backfires,” The Guardian reported. “The Brazilian government, the UN, the Roman Catholic Church and the Globo media conglomerate all supported the move, but the people gave a resounding no in a referendum that proposed a ban on gun sales. With over 90% of the votes counted, 64% rejected the ban.”
As usual, the elites and the useful idiots were for it. So, what was it the people knew that made all the difference?
“People here fear the police and their guns more than they do the (drug) dealers,” I quoted a slum dweller talking to The Washington Post in a GUNS Magazine article on Brazil.
Here’s why:
“Brazil’s police ‘execute thousands’” the BBC headline declares.
“You couldn’t really investigate complaints because you knew there was this curtain of silence that was always present,” former police ombudsman Professor Julita Lemgruber claimed, adding, “that she had personally dealt with cases in which summary executions had happened.”
“A lot of these killings are quasi-executions, with shots to the head and the heart,” a representative of the human rights group Global Justice told The Houston Chronicle, which reported “police in Rio and its suburbs … have taken the lives of more than 4,000 people in the past five years … In the worst massacre in Rio’s history, police officers gunned down 29 men, women and children on the night of March 31.”
So with this as the backdrop for the recent past, how is Lula selling citizen disarmament today, with a fawning media hanging on his every word?
“Brazil’s Lula: ‘Jobs And Books, Not Guns,’” teleSUR dutifully gushed.
“Commonsense gun safety,” right? That and the “majority” want disarmament edicts, right?
The tactics never change, and the results are always the same.
Bolsonaro, on the other hand, tried to ease Brazil’s tyrannical gun restrictions but then was forced to pull back, as this column reported in 2019. His presidential decree, bold by Brazilian standards but abysmally unacceptable by U.S. gun owner standards, declared:
“Permission for the rural gun-owner with legal possession of a firearm to use the weapon within the perimeter of their own property; Breaking of the monopoly on arms imports in Brazil; Permission for collectors, sport shooters and hunters (CSCs) to be able to travel between home and shooting site with the firearm and its ammunition; Armed Forces Veterans with ten years or more of experience will be entitled to bear firearms; The right to purchase up to 50 cartridges per year will go up to one thousand cartridges per year.”
Even that was too much for the Brazilian political establishment. The Supreme Court (the same group that put Lula back in the political power game) had to review it for “constitutionality.” And “[I]t faced a strong opposition, even from governors in states with high rates of violence who argued the order failed to improve security.”
It’s interesting that by having to pull back on his decree, it was pretty much demonstrated Bolsonaro did not have the political juice to overcome opposition from squabbling government entities at all levels driven by their own power agendas and determined to bring him down. Yet when it comes to his handling of a health crisis thrust on his country by global powers who keep changing their stories on what happened, who’s responsible for it, and what’s the best way to deal with it, he alone bears responsibility?
This looks to be another case of the left not letting a crisis of “progressive” government’s creation go to waste. It’s a test if Brazilians with short memories are desperate and dumb enough to fall for Lula’s siren promises. As philosopher George Santayana famously observed:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
