Feature Articles

More centralized firearms data, less guns circulating, more guns seized, a 90% drop in gun sales and significantly less gun licenses issued, and more importantly, over five thousand lives saved in less than three years. These were some of the major advances resulting from Brazil’s gun control law enacted in December of 2003.

In deliberations in the United Nations since 2006, the project for a global, legally binding, arms trade treaty enters a new phase: determining the content and shape of the treaty, enactment is expected for 2012. Experts hope the treaty will bring arms trade out of invisibility and lower the negative impact of guns over civilians.

Preliminary findings of a Viva Rio and Brazilian Congress' Subcom Firearms and Ammunitions Control Office survey say that there is much to be improved in gun control in the country. Survey cites irregular data provision as key problem for gun control as a strategy to lower levels of violence.

New findings from a group of British universities suggest that soon pollen may tell us key facts about homicides today, connecting victims of gun crime to the perpetrators, by becoming indelible ammunition tags.

The Portuguese speaking nation, rich in Petroleum, has recently embarked on a gun collection campaign that has already collected 52 thousand weapons in nine  months. With two more years to go, Angolan authorities have ambitious plans.

Over 102 thousand firearms have already been taken out of circulation by Argentina's national voluntary hand in plan, now the Ministry of Justice would like it to continue into 2009.

The calm atmosphere of the First Committee of the UN General Assembly can seem a very long way from the slums of Brazil or the refugee camps in East Africa. This is misleading – since guns cross borders easily, global coordinated action is an essential part of the solution.

Congress members proposed 123 changes in Brazil's Gun Law, the Disarmament Statute, in an effort to alter the Provisionary Measure that extended the gun re-registration period in Brazil. It was rejected by the Federal Supreme Court. 

Fifteen years after a peace agreement brought to an end the civil war that claimed the lives of over a million people, Mozambique is interested in knowing how many firearms are still in existence in the nation, and where they are.

"Exert pressure from grass-roots level and from highest spheres", faith-based entities met in Kenya calling for dialogue on gun control and the Arms Trade Treaty in the continent.