Violence-torn Brazil votes to keep gun sales

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil voted today to keep gun sales legal, though the country has the world's highest death toll from firearms.

More than 64 per cent of voters favoured keeping arms sales legal, the electoral court said with 75 per cent of the expected 122 million votes counted.

Only 35 per cent supported the ban even though some 36,000 people were killed by guns last year in Latin America's largest country, where bloodshed and violence are a daily concern for many citizens. Full results were expected this afternoon NZT.

"We didn't lose because Brazilians like guns. We lost because people don't have confidence in the government or the police," said Denis Mizne of anti-violence group Sou da Paz.

In debates leading up to the vote, many people worried that a ban would leave them defenceless against heavily armed criminals. Public confidence is low in a police force widely seen as inefficient, abusive and corrupt.

"This referendum ... is not going to end violence," said Assis Augusto Pires, 60, who voted against the ban in Sao Paulo's wealthy Jardim Paulistano district, where high walls, electrified fences and private guards protect residents.

In Rio de Janeiro's Rocinha shantytown, where a gangland turf war has raged over the past year, Carlos Eduardo Ferreira, a 40-year-old electrician, said he was voting for the ban.

"I am for the ban; I am for life. I've already seen kids hit by bullets here," he said.

Spotlighting the issue, a young girl was wounded by a stray bullet as police clashed with drug traffickers in Rio de Janeiro's Dende slum on Saturday night, police said.

In Minas Gerais state, a supporter of gun sales shot and wounded a ban backer in an argument in a bar on Friday.

Supporters and opponents waged intense campaigns.

Surveys done a month ago had shown most people favoured the ban but recent polls swung the other way. Groups favouring the ban accused local arms manufacturers of funding a big gun rights campaign and manipulating people's fears.

The result could influence gun laws in other developing countries and is being watched by US lobby groups like the National Rifle Association.

If the ban had passed, all sales of guns and ammunition would have been halted, although public safety officers, private security firms and sport clubs would still have been able to buy them.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his wife Marisa Leticia, casting their ballots in the industrial city of Sao Bernardo do Campo earlier on Sunday, both voted for the ban.

"I think that for an ordinary person to have firearms is not going to give security, so I voted 'Yes,"' Lula said.

Congressman Alberto Fraga, head of the gun lobby said the "no" vote represented a protest.

"The government has done nothing to improve the public security situation," Fraga said in the capital Brasilia.

Violence is rampant throughout Brazil, from the cities to the Amazon jungle. Drugs gangs control Rio's slums -- one area is named the Gaza Strip because of the frequent clashes.

Delinquents are often dealt with by hired hitmen called "justiceiros" and in the vast interior, land disputes and other scores are settled by hired gunmen known as "pistoleiros."

The United Nations ranks Brazil second in the world behind Venezuela in per capita gun deaths, with 22 for every 100,000 people. In absolute terms it leads, with more than 36,000 shot and killed last year, according to government figures.

That is down from 39,000 in 2003, a drop pro-ban groups attribute to a government-sponsored gun buy-back programme.

In Jardim Panorama, a rough Sao Paulo shantytown, lots ofpeople voted "no". If gun sales were banned, many fear lowly-paid police might dabble in arms trafficking.

- REUTERS