STF invalidates Bolsonaro’s decrees on gun policy

The Federal Supreme Court (STF) concluded this Friday (30) the judgments of two actions regarding the gun policy of the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL), made ineligible by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) that same day.

In one of the actions, the understanding was consolidated that the acquisition of firearms requires proof of actual need, excluding living in urban areas with high rates of violence as a justification. Minister Edson Fachin, rapporteur for the action proposed by the PSB, concluded that “the best scientific practices attest that the increase in the number of people possessing firearms tends to decrease, and never increase, the safety of Brazilian citizens and foreign citizens who are found in the national territory”.

The ministers Rosa Weber, Alexandre de Moraes, Dias Toffoli, Luiz Fux, Gilmar Mendes, Cármen Lúcia and Luís Roberto Barroso accompanied the rapporteur’s vote. The only ones who voted against this understanding were ministers Kassio Nunes Marques, who opened a divergence, and André Mendonça, who followed him.

For Nunes Marques, “just as the right to health lends itself to guaranteeing the right to life of every citizen, the right to adequately defend oneself against an unfair threat to one’s very existence seems to derive from a constitutional guarantee, constituting a consequence and means of protection of their constitutional right to life”. He, however, was outvoted.

In another virtual plenary trial that ended this Friday, the STF unanimously invalidated four decrees that made access to weapons more flexible, which in practice had already been suspended in 2021 by the rapporteur for the action, Minister Rosa Weber.

The decrees allowed possession of up to six firearms for people with a Firearm Registration Certificate (before the decree there were 4), national carrying of weapons and also opened up the possibility of replacing the technical capacity report – required by law – with a “attestation of regularity” issued by shooting clubs. The decrees also reduced the Army’s inspection of the circulation of weapons.

Rosa Weber considered that the measures decreed by Bolsonaro are incompatible with the so-called Disarmament Statute, in addition to having “exceeded” constitutional limits inherent to the activity of the Executive Branch, since they did not have the approval of Congress. Minister Nunes Marques followed the rapporteur’s vote, but asked for the action to be shelved, since Bolsonaro’s decrees had been altered by decrees of the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).