Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

ARGENTINA: Government to Offer Cash for Guns

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 23 2006 (IPS) - With the aim of reducing violence and crime, Argentina plans to implement a disarmament campaign similar to Brazil’s, in which the State will offer money in exchange for weapons in the hands of private citizens.

The disarmament bill that the government sent to Congress this month is part of a wider plan to tighten control over activities for which the use of firearms is legal, and to come down hard on illegal gun-running.

Together with the exchange of guns for cash, a six-month amnesty is proposed for those who have unregistered firearms in their possession, or whose licenses have expired, in order to encourage the surrender of illegal guns, which are to be destroyed.

Non-governmental organisations belonging to the Argentine Disarmament Network participated in developing the plan, which was designed by the Ministry of the Interior.

“We have to destroy the myth that owning a gun protects us against crime, because the reverse is actually true: having a gun is dangerous,” Darío Kosovsky, a member of the Network and of the Institute of Comparative Studies in Criminal and Social Sciences, told IPS.

“Most violent deaths are the result of conflicts that are unrelated to crime,” stated Kosovsky, the author of “Citizen Sheriffs: Guns and Violence in Argentina” (“El ciudadano Sheriff. Armas y violencia en Argentina”).

The plan is to launch a massive awareness raising campaign alongside the gun swap programme. The campaign will highlight, for example, the risk of a child finding a gun at home and taking it to school.

“The money offered as an incentive to those who bring in their guns will not be enough to buy a new one, but even if this happened, the aim of reducing the number of guns in circulation would in any case be achieved,” Kosovsky said.

He explained that the programme is similar to Brazil’s, where more than 400,000 firearms were withdrawn from circulation in 2004, and measures to restrict the carrying of weapons were tightened.

But the following year, Brazil held a referendum on prohibiting small arms sales. The results were 65 percent against the ban and only 35 percent in favour.

However, for the first time in many years the number of deaths caused by gunshot wounds, which had been growing continuously since the early 1990s, dropped by about 20 percent in Brazil’s biggest cities, the Argentine expert said.

According to the National Registry of Weapons (RENAR), which has just been transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of the Interior, there are 1.2 million legally owned weapons in Argentina and at least that many circulating illegally on the black market.

In total, nearly three million weapons are estimated to circulate in this country of nearly 37 million people.

Over the past 10 years, the total number of guns registered has increased five-fold. Experts attribute this growth to an increase in the sense of insecurity, even though people are sceptical about the usefulness of guns to fight it.

In 2003, 10 people a day died in Argentina from gunshot wounds. But only three of the 10 deaths occurred in the context of crimes against property, according to the government’s Federal Bureau of Criminal Policies.

Kosovsky believes that if 30,000 to 50,000 weapons can be withdrawn from circulation, the campaign will have been a success. “We mustn’t project exaggerated expectations. This isn’t about fighting insecurity, but about reducing violence,” he said.

Last year, after the referendum in Brazil, a survey by Argentina’s National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) found that 69 percent of respondents in Argentina were in favour of a campaign to take firearms out of circulation, and 73 percent thought it was dangerous to have guns at home.

But the same survey showed that 11 percent of respondents admitted they kept guns at home, a “spinechilling” proportion according to the survey report, if extrapolated to the entire population, and well above official estimates.

The Argentine Disarmament Network came into being in 2004, inspired by the Brazilian campaign against violence. Since that time, non-governmental organisations have joined forces to make progress towards a State policy on the issue.

One of these organisations, Espacios (Spaces), ran a gun buy-back scheme in the western province of Mendoza. And in Buenos Aires province, a woman member of the network is carrying out a personal crusade for weapons exchange.

Lidia Ortiz, a retired teacher living in La Plata, the capital of Buenos Aires province, has managed to remove 800 weapons from circulation in the last five years, using her own personal funds.

The 81-year-old woman is known in La Plata as “the old lady of the guns.” She is convinced that with financial support, many more guns could be taken out of people’s hands. In her case, she does not hand the weapons over to the police, but to a group of artists who smelt them down to create sculptures.

Now the State is making available five million dollars for the gun swap. However, professional criminals will not risk giving them up, because they are “the tools of their trade,” said Kosovsky.

In contrast, owners of guns for personal protection whose licenses have expired, people who inherited their weapons and never took out a license, or those who have them for other reasons, will now have an opportunity to hand them in to be destroyed, he said.

The disarmament network was able to take advantage of an incident that created an outcry in public opinion and government circles: the arrest in July of a young man, a licensed gun owner, who shot and killed a person on the street.

Martín Ríos did not use his weapon to commit a robbery, but fired out of the blue on defenceless people taken completely by surprise, on at least two occasions.

When the case was investigated it was found that Ríos had completed all the requirements for legal gun possession, including providing certificates of psychological fitness.

Members of the disarmament network believe that RENAR is too lax in authorising weapons possession. Some procedures for obtaining gun licences can even be carried out from home over the Internet, and there is no control over the movement of registered weapons that are subsequently diverted into the illegal market.

Kosovsky said that the programme would improve controls on imports and also of local weapons production, which is in the hands of private companies and the State Military Manufacturing company (FMA).

Experts point out that stricter supervision is needed on the raw materials for weapons manufacture, as well as tighter control of imports to check that the supply of arms on the market is consistent with legal demand.

A policy is also needed to vigorously track down weapons crossing over into the black market. President Néstor Kirchner suggested this month that there are weapons in the hands of civilians that have come from military and police storage facilities.

In general these weapons have been stolen – and there are numerous reports of such cases -but they may also be sold to criminals, and there are even rings that exist which make it their business to rent firearms out to clients by the hour for the purpose of committing crimes.

Another problem is the weapons stored in court depots. At the central courtroom alone, there are about 32,000 confiscated firearms awaiting destruction.

Judges are unwilling to order their destruction because, they argue, they may be required as evidence in trials. But Kosovsky said that with today’s technical expertise, once a piece has been examined for evidence it can be discarded.