RIO DE JANEIRO — Every time he hit the road as a traveling salesman, Francisco Pereira packed two things: clothes and heat.
It was just a simple handgun, small and cheap. "He was afraid something would happen," said his wife, Palmyra Goncalves Pereira. "He felt safer with it."
Thankfully, her husband retired without having to fire a shot. But now Palmyra, 72, sees her grandchildren staring at the gun in fascination, and she worries they might come to harm.
She and her husband are eager to get rid of the firearm. In exchange, they will receive not only peace of mind but a modest payment under a buyback program in effect since July, part of an ambitious gun-control law in one of South America's most violent countries.
Already, the buyback has exceeded official expectations, with more weapons turned in halfway through the six-month program than had been forecast for its entire duration. Officials have collected nearly 130,000 guns, and there is talk of extending the program's deadline.
Complaints, too, have arisen. Gun-control advocates say federal police, who are in charge of administering the buyback, have resisted the help of civic organizations and scorned other measures to make the program even more effective.
Despite the law's early success, the pulse of violence in Brazil persists. The number of firearms handed over is minuscule compared with the total believed to be in circulation, and daily headlines here in Rio throb with accounts of fatal street robberies, shootouts between criminals and police and wanton bloodletting among feuding drug gangs that have no intention of surrendering their stockpiles.
"The government says there are 8 million to 20 million guns in the country. The 130,000 is a drop in the ocean," said Leonardo Arruda, spokesman for the National Assn. of Gun Owners and Vendors, which opposes the new law. "Violence will continue to increase."
Gun deaths have already reached staggering levels in Brazil. Someone is killed by a bullet every 12 minutes, adding up to more than 40,000 such deaths a year -- many more than occur in the U.S., which has 100 million more people.
The new legislation imposes strict criteria on gun ownership, establishes a unified national gun registry, forbids most ordinary citizens to carry firearms in public and calls for a referendum a year from now on whether to ban gun sales entirely, a measure that would probably pass by a large majority if the vote were held today.
