Marcela Valente. Inter-Press Service. December 8, 2008
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?
BUENOS AIRES - As a disarmament campaign launched 17 months ago in Argentina nears its end, the government and civil society groups involved in the initiative announced that it has far exceeded even the most optimistic projections, despite the lack of publicity.
The Interior Ministry reported that the programme, in which people voluntarily swap their firearms for cash, has so far collected over 102,000 guns and 721,000 munitions, all of which were destroyed.
During the campaign, which was launched in July 2007, people were urged to anonymously hand over their illegally or legally owned firearms -- revolvers, pistols, shot guns, carbines or rifles -- and ammunition in exchange for sums running from 100 to 450 pesos (34 to 150 dollars), at fixed and mobile stations set up around the country by the Interior Ministry.
An amnesty for those who surrender illegal weapons, or guns with expired permits, ends on Dec. 11, when the campaign winds up. After the deadline, anyone found in illegal possession of a firearm could go to jail.
"The plan worked very well, despite the low level of publicity. We hope there will be a new extension," Carola Cóncaro, with the Institute of Comparative Studies in Penal and Social Sciences (INECIP), told IPS.
INECIP forms part of the Argentine Disarmament Network (RAD), which presented the proposal for the gun swap programme to the Interior Ministry.
The RAD initiative emerged in 2004, after a 15-year-old boy in the town of Carmen de Patagones, in the eastern province of Buenos Aires, opened fire in his school with a revolver, killing three of his classmates and injuring five.
"We thought the programme would be a success if we managed to recover 35,000 or 45,000 guns, and we took in over 100,000," said Cóncaro. "So it was totally successful, and would have been even more so if there had been publicity, and if we would have had more human resources and more stations set up around the country to receive the guns."
Adrián Marcenac, of the Alfredo Marcenac Civil Association, also said he was "very pleased" with the results. In a conversation with IPS, Marcenac, whose son was killed in a random shooting, said the results of a programme carried out with virtually no media support were "doubly valid."
Marcenac pointed out that the law that created the gun swap programme also projected an awareness-raising campaign on the risks of owning firearms. "We didn't get very far on that point, and it's really needed, but I hope we can do so with an extension of the programme," he said.
Adrián's son Alfredo was 19 years old when he was shot and killed by a stranger in 2006 while walking down the street in Buenos Aires.
The shooter, who had a gun licence despite the fact that he was mentally ill, simply began to shoot people at random on the street, firing his gun 11 times.
According to official figures, there are 1.2 million legally owned guns in Argentina and at least that many unregistered guns.
The results of a survey by the Mora y Araujo polling company coincided with those figures, indicating that 2.2 million civilians are armed in this country of nearly 38 million people.
The promoters of the campaign said the idea is not to combat crime but to reduce gun-related violence.
A study by the Secretariat for Criminal Policy found that 10 people a day die in Argentina from gunshot wounds, but only three of the 10 deaths are robbery-related. The rest are the result of fights, suicides or accidents.
"The increase in demand for weapons among civilians is fuelled by people's fear of becoming a victim of a crime, but that is not the right answer, because it has been proven that, if there are more guns out there, there is more violence, damages and death," said Cóncaro.
The Secretariat reported that firearms are the second cause of death in Argentina, and that 28 percent of gun-related deaths occur in the family home.
In the case of domestic violence, the risk of death is 12 times greater if there is a firearm in the house.
The civil society groups comprising the Argentine Disarmament Network presented their proposal for a gun swap campaign to the Interior Ministry in 2006, following the model used in other cities in Argentina and in Brazil, where some 440,000 firearms were withdrawn from circulation in 2004.
The activists say the campaign should continue, due to the strong response it received. To that end, the Interior Ministry introduced a new draft law in late November, to fund an extension of the gun swap programme and amnesty.
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