Beginning in 2014, stores in the Brazilian Federal District will no longer be able to sell toy or replica guns. The new law is part of a broader series of public policy initiatives that are designed to reduce violence and violent crime in the region and construct a new “culture of peace.” To support the transition to a culture of peace, Valéria de Velasco, minister for the protection of victims of violence, believes that it is important to focus on developing a nonviolent attitude in children.
According to Velasco, the district “is in search of a new culture, one of non-violence, that has to come from our children. It is a work of transformation and of cultural transformation.” She acknowledges that “toy guns don’t kill, but they symbolise an attitude.”
Violence in the Brazilian Federal District has been steadily on the rise. The Brazilian Center for Latin-American Studies in Rio de Janeiro reports that the homicide rate in Brazil rose from 24.8 per 100,000 in 1996 to 27.1 per 100,000 in 2011.
In Ceilândia, one of Brasilia’s poorest and most violent towns, there were 119 homicides in 2012. That’s one of the reasons why Velasco chose the town to operate a pilot program that encouraged children to trade their toy weapons for books. The program took in 502 toy guns.
Velasco was happy with the results of the toy guns for books program. “This intervention enforces the importance of this law, how children assimilate new concepts and adopt them as theirs,” she said. “Children are going to take this discussion to schools, to their families and to the community in general.”
Not only does the new law ban the sale of toy guns, it also bans the sale of replica guns. This is an important distinction. That’s because replica guns, those that appear to be real guns, are frequently used to commit violent crimes. Velasco keeps close attention to these crime statistics and reports that 12% of armed assaults in the Federal District were committed by bandits using replica guns. In São Paulo, 18% of the armed assaults were committed by bandits using replica guns.
Store owners caught selling toy or replica guns in Brasilia and other cities in the Brazilian Federal District will be subject to substantial penalties. Those penalties include fines between R$5,000 and R$100,000, the closing of their business for 30 days, and losing their trading license.