Brazil

From Rio de Janeiro

One of the fetishes of the far-right and increasingly radicalized president Jair Bolsonaro responds to the acronym “CACs”. They are the groups that gather gun collectors, professional shooters and hunters.

In the midst of his incessant campaign in favor of distribute weapons To the “good people”, read his most ardent followers, Bolsonaro made that number experience a formidable increase of 474%: if in 2018, the year of his election, Brazil had 117,467 CACs, on July 1st that volume reached to 673,818.

This means that the number of people registered as “CACs” quickly approached the sum of the provincial military police (406,000 throughout the country) and the Armed Forces (360,000 active).

In total, under Bolsonaro there are two million 800 thousand weapons registered as “private collection”. The acronym “CACs” shelters 957 thousand 300 weapons. Another 692,500 are in the hands of citizens who have legal authorization to have or carry weapons.

The far right Bolsonaro defends that “the armed people will never be enslaved”, and says that having a weapon means being able to protect not only family members but also the heritage of each “good citizen.”

Interestingly, Bolsonaro himself was mugged once. The thieves took his motorcycle and his gun. This double loss of assets is never mentioned by the increasingly unbalanced president.

As a consequence of the growth in the number of weapons in the hands of the population, stores dedicated to the sale of pistols, revolvers, carbines and rifles, as well as shooter clubs, also multiplied rapidly.

Scattered throughout the country there are currently 2,066 clubs of this modality. Many of them were baptized as “Patriotas do Brasil”, “Armas Brasil” or, alluding to the verse “patria amada Brasil” of the national anthem, “Patria Armada Brasil”.

Beyond weapons, these groups intend, in the general elections in October, to form a strong representation in the Congress. 34 candidates for national deputy, senator and provincial governor have already been announced, all linked to the Pro-Arms Associationthe largest and strongest group in the sector.

For the provincial assemblies there are 23 other names, and the aforementioned group announced that it intends to create a political party.

There is a well-founded fear that a substantial part of these groups will take to the streets to defend Bolsonaro from a defeat that increasingly seems inevitable at the polls in October.

The repeated affirmations that it is necessary to defend “the homeland from the communist danger” targets the former president Lula da Silvawhose followers are considered by Bolsonaro and his side, rather than adversaries, visceral enemies.

All this means that from now on, beyond the political tension, it will be necessary to take great care of that immense amount of weapons in radical hands.