Lula’s government revoked a series of rules on the possession and carrying of weapons by the Bolsonaro government.| Photo: Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil

Minister Gilmar Mendes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), suspended this Wednesday (15) all lower court proceedings questioning the legality of the presidential decree restricting access to weapons, signed at the beginning of the year. The decision was given one day after the Advocacy-General of the Union (AGU) asked for an injunction for the text to be declared constitutional.

In the decision that covers the injunction requested by the AGU, Gilmar Mendes states that the suspension of the processes is necessary to avoid conflicting decisions in court, and that “in the Brazilian constitutional order there is no fundamental right of access to firearms by citizens”. (see in full)

“The issue of Decree 11.366/2023, whose purpose is precisely to establish a kind of tidying brake on this trend of dizzying flexibility of the rules of access to firearms and ammunition in Brazil while discussing new regulation of the matter, far from denoting any kind of unconstitutionality, goes, on the contrary, to meet the understanding of this Federal Supreme Court on the subject”, he said.

He also states that the successive regulations to the Disarmament Statute had as a “declared purpose the wide flexibility” of the norms related to the purchase, carrying and registration – and that there was “even an expansion of the situations in which the registration and the registration of firearms could be dispensed with,” he added.

through the social mediathe Minister of Justice, Flávio Dino, cited the decision of the STF and stated that there was an “out of control armament” before the presidential decree.