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 Brazil is a funny country. You are taxed to guarantee your medical care... and then you have to pay another private health insurance if you want in fact to guarantee your health. You pay taxes to assure public education... and then you have to pay for private education, if you take seriously the education of your children. You pay dear to the State for your own safety... and then you have to pay even dearer for private security services, if you want to live in safety.
For quite some time now I have been defending the thesis that tax evasion, in these circumstances, is a civic duty. When you pay taxes, you are just feeding an incommensurate chain of corrupt people, who charge an extra fee even to vote laws, laws whose main objective by and large is to plunder the taxpayer even more.
This generous food chain starts with fat mensalões (monthly allowances) for deputies in Brasília and keeps on diluting into mensalinhos in the lower instances. The only thing that matters, for the power's general well-being, is that all their acolytes be well fed.
This coming Sunday the Brazilian government submits to the nation a monumental farce set up to disguise its inability to guarantee safety to the citizens: the referendum on guns commercialization in the country. Ibope's latest poll shows that 49% of the interviewees said no to the commercialization prohibition and just 45% said yes. With this the illustrious folks responsible for the consultation are already getting the picture that this idea might result in auto goal.
As nonsense brings in nonsense, they are already planning a second rigmarole: to intensify the propaganda in favor of the yes to the prohibition. After Lula came to power thanks to marketing by adman Duda Mendonça, the PT started to consider every popular decision a propaganda matter. But it seems that not even the so-called artists - venal as all those who depend on patronage - are managing to convince voters on the government's reasons.
It's estimated that 500 million reais (US$ 222 million) are being spent on this consultation. This money would be much more useful if used to improve the population's safety. It is an exotic consultation: the citizen is asked if he wants to renounce a sacred right, the right to self-defense, by the way one of the steadfast clauses of the Constitution. Without guns, how can you defend yourself? With slaps?
It's also a stupid consultation: if the commercialization of guns is forbidden in the country, nothing prevents those who want guns to bring them from abroad. (As it was common during the era of the market reserve policy for computers. Brazilian computers were expensive and trashy? No sweat, all you needed was to call Paraguay and the next day you would receive, at home, a good machine for a good price).
This won't prevent me either, for example, from giving guns to a friend as a gift. Or to my customers: you buy a fishing rod and you get a rifle as a gift. In this case, there was no commercialization. Basically, the government is throwing 500 million in the trash to decide what is the sex of the angels.
I have been bombarded with texts and declarations in favor and against the government's proposal. It's curious to note that most people take the referendum as a discussion about disarmament, when the truth is it discusses the commercialization of guns. The disarmament, in reality, was already made by the law n° 10.826, of December 22, 2003. In the emails that I receive, there are nonsense and sophism from both sides.
Those who defend the free trade of guns maintain that their prohibition is typical of totalitarian regimes that want to disarm the population to keep it defenseless before the abuses of power. You get the impression from this, that if Brazilians were armed they would react forcibly when faced with such abuses.
Now, we live in a country in which the government plunders the taxpayer with abusive taxes, buys congressmen systematically to further its will, sticks the hand in the pensioners pocket, thanks to flagrantly unconstitutional measures, all of this to make their courtiers and family even richer.
We live in a full kleptocracy, managed by a scoundrel and illiterate former metalworker. How did the citizens react? Lula still has chances to be reelected in 2006. A vile people do not need to be disarmed to maintain it docility to the power. All you need is a monthly little charity to buy their vote. A cultured people are something else: due to a mere tea tax, the North-American colonists declared their independence.
One of the most deceitful arguments hijacked by the prohibition defenders was repeated, yesterday, in the daily Folha de S. Paulo, by Dalmo Dallari: "Wherever the guns trade is absolutely free, with citizens being granted total self-defense power, the number of crimes against person and property is very high".
It seems that the illustrious and renowned jurist never heard of Switzerland, where carrying and purchasing weapons are allowed and where each citizen keeps at home the Army issued gun. Murder rate: a death for each 100,000 Swiss. In Brazil, where restrictions against carrying weapons are already severe, this rate is of 29 for 100,000 inhabitants.
But the prize for the most ridiculous idea probably goes to the country's different religious groups, who favor the yes vote to forbid weapons, always flashing the peace flag.
"Our participation was not only to collect guns, but also to make people aware that we also need to disarm from our belligerent thoughts, that we need to promote the construction of a peace culture," said pastor Ervino Schmidt, the executive secretary of the Conic (National Council of Christian Churches).
Among the emails that I received from these sects, many maintain that Christ's peace does not mix with guns, after all Christ ordered Peter to put his sword into its sheath when he cut off the high priest's servant ear.
These gentlemen forget - or they willfully omit - that Christ himself also said: "Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."
He also told his disciples: "And let him who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one." Curiously, these passages of a belligerent Christ, who emphatically stands up for carrying guns, were not used by the defenders of the no vote.
Yesterday's issue of O Estado de S. Paulo had an interview with those who are really expert on guns, the thieves. Here are some answers of eight men charged with armed robberies:
"When a robber is intent on robbing he will rob. If a thief had fear, he would not rob an armored car. There are so many armed people inside and this doesn't prevent the car from being robbed anyway," said a 25-year-old youngster, in jail for theft.
"If it were me, I wouldn't trust the idea that guns defend citizens," said another one. "If I know someone has a gun, I stay alert. Any move the victim makes you think he is gonna get his weapon and this way it makes it easier to kill that person. Not that we want to do this, but you know, it might happen. It is the same thing when you rob a policeman. You know he is armed and you shoot. Because he shoots to kill."
"Whoever draws first hits the jackpot," says Rafael, 23, convicted for drug trafficking. For him, with the surprise factor, the thief is rarely in disadvantage. Does an armed victim intimidate? "I fear nothing but God who, when he touches you, does it deep inside."
"If the victim shoots, there are three or four more warriors to carry on - says João, 37.
In other words: with guns or without guns, the citizen will continue forsaken and helpless. My position before this idiotic question? Despite my serious differences of opinion with this gentleman, I stay with Christ.
Janer Cristaldo - he holds a Ph.D. from University of Paris, Sorbonne - is an author, translator, lawyer, philosopher and journalist and lives in São Paulo. His e-mail address is janercr@terra.com.br.
Translated from the Portuguese by Arlindo Silva.
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....with an objective view of the sad reality....in Brazil !!!!!!
Should be published in all brazilians newspapers for reading....and hand delivered to Lula and his gang !!!!!!!