-but speaking of Brazil-
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) --
The Supreme Court has
overturned a nationwide ban on gun sales
decreed
earlier this year as part of a government program to curb
rising crime rates in Latin America's largest country. Ruling
on an appeal filed by the Liberal Social Party, the court's 11
justices voted unanimously to overturn a June 21 decree
that banned the issuing of gun permits through the end of
the year. The decree in effect imposed a nationwide ban on
firearm sales, because nobody can buy a gun without a
permit. "Criminals don't buy their weapons in gun stores,"
Chief Justice Carlos Velloso told reporters in explaining the
court's ruling. He said the decree had no impact in curbing
crime in this nation where recent statistics say a killing takes
place every 13 minutes. The Supreme Court accepted the
party's arguments that the decree undermined the right to
self-defense and violated the constitution's free enterprise
guarantees. The government issued the now-defunct
decree as a stopgap measure until a comprehensive gun-
control bill that has been stuck in Congress for months is
approved. The bill would restrict possession of firearms to
the armed forces, police, private security personnel,
collectors and gun clubs, people in rural areas, and private
security agencies.
In a break with tradition,
a provincial British police force
has sent officers out on routine foot patrol armed with
pistols, says the Sunday Times. The newspaper said
Nottinghamshire's action - a break from Britain's tradition of
unarmed bobbies - was being studied by at least six other
regional forces worried by the rising number of crimes
involving guns. Latest national police statistics show that
armed crime is up 10 per cent in the last year. The
The Feds newest numbers are still ridiculously low.
As
newspaper said the action was taken after several shooting
of September 30, 2000, the Feds have only issued 344,755
incidents between rival drug gangs in Nottinghamshire in
licenses with a mere 155,907 in process. Total number of
central England. British police usually carry guns only to
firearms in the registration system 1,621,225. However,
deal with sieges, hijacks, terrorist incidents and armed
1,205 million of these are the old handgun registry that has
robberies.
been in place since 1934 and contains data so innaccurate
that handgun owners are required to reregister by 2003.
There have been 472,402 new registrations since the
implementation of Bill C-68 (December 1/98) but only
103,476 are registrations to individuals. The rest? Dealer
to Dealer transfers. As many of our readers love the number
crunch, that works out to $4,832 per gun registration (based
on a very conservative $500M). Another little bout of CFC
hooey is over the much hyped "Spousal Notification Line"
The CFC claims that this line has recieved over 17,100 calls
but many firearms dealers have reported to
CILA
that a
glitch in the CFC phone system caused calls made on the
"Dealer Hotline" to be automatically transferred over to the
"Angry Ex Snitch Line" by mistake.
Liberal leader Jean Chrétien
criticized the Canadian
Alliance for its opposition to the government's gun licensing
and registration plan. "We have four times or five times less
murders in Canada by guns because we have gun control
laws," he said. "But if you are against crime, you don't make
sure that there is a gun in every home in the nation.
Chretien left some of the 150-odd MPs in a Liberal caucus
meeting shaking their heads in wonderment when he
responded that he was going to win the election by arguing
against a gun in every house as well as on fighting the
opposition on prostitution in Brazil. No wonder Allan Rock
wants to legalize marijuana!
