On Friday, I was asked at a Colorado briefing if I had any good policy news from around the world.
I was stumped. Because mostly we’ve seen policy move in the wrong direction.
In recent years, we’ve seen a couple of nations repeal their flat tax systems. A few governments also have sabotaged their nations’ private Social Security systems. There have been all sorts of bailouts, and the human right of financial privacy has been eroded by tax-greedy politicians.
So I gave a pessimistic answer. But I should have thought beyond economic policy because there is a bit of potential good news from Brazil. Time reports that citizens may soon get the right to keep and bear arms.
Congressmen in Brazil, one of the most violent countries in the world, are proposing to dramatically loosen restrictions on personal gun ownership, bringing the country much closer to the American right to bear arms. The politicians say the measures are necessary to allow embattled citizens the right to defend themselves from criminals armed with illegal weapons. …The draft law…introduces a right for citizens to own firearms for self-defense or the protection of property.
Not surprisingly, the statists think people should have to rely on government.
…opponents say the move will only increase the country’s toll of nearly 60,000 murders in 2014. …“Without doubt we will see an increase in the murder rate,” says Ivan Marques, executive director of the Sou de Paz institute, which campaigns for disarmament. …Marques said Brazil should not try to emulate the United States. “Our constitution emphasizes collective security not individual security,” he added. …José Mariano Beltrame, the state security secretary in Rio de Janeiro… “We need to disarm the bandits not arm the people,” he says in an emailed statement.
But the reality is that the government is incapable of protecting people. The bad guys can get guns (as we’ve repeatedly seen in Europe). Prohibition simply means the good guys are disarmed.
“…the state has failed to resolve this problem,” the law’s author Laudivio Carvalho of the powerful Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, says in a telephone interview. “The population needs the right to defend themselves, their family and their property as they are the ones being attacked. Ninety percent of assaults are being carried out with illegal weapons.”
So let’s keep our fingers crossed that human rights will be expanded in Latin America.
