During the tenure of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s incredibly restrictive gun laws were loosened enough that many average citizens who were previously unable to lawfully possess a firearm were finally able to become legal gun owners. Coincidentally (or not), the country’s homicide rate declined even as gun permits soared, but now the current president of Brazil is looking to crack down on those new gun owners.

On Friday Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva issued an executive order meant to reverse the gains made by gun owners over the past few years, declaring that only the military and police need to be “well-armed”.

Lula intends to reduce the number of guns civilians can possess for personal use from 4 to 2, and the ammunition for each gun in their possession is to be reduced from 200 to 50. The full executive order with more details about the gun control policies has not been made publicly available, but local news has reported that there will be restrictions certain calibers, a “buyback” program to remove certain guns out of public circulation and other new restrictions. The new policy also decreases the duration of a gun permit from 10 years to 3-5 years depending on the holder.

Lula’s policies comes after several school shootings and aims to confront stark gun violence in the county. The new plan is a complete shift from Lula’s predecessor, whose “lax” policies Lula cites as a major contributory factor in high homicide rates. Although there is no constitutional right to arms in Brazil, Bolsonaro loosened the rules on gun possession and ammunition. The anti-violence NGO Instituto Sou da Paz held Bolsonaro’s government responsible for the new weapons in circulation, suggesting that the “miscontrolled” gun policy made it easier and cheaper for criminals to access weapons and ammunition.

The biggest problem with Lula’s argument is that Brazil’s homicide rates were even higher back when it was virtually impossible for the average citizen to own or carry a firearm for self-defense. The country’s murder rate peaked in 2017 at more than 30 homicides per 100,000 people, but last year the number of homicides recorded was the fewest since 2011.

Meanwhile, the number of privately-owned firearms registered with the Federal Police jumped by 47.5% between 2019 and 2022. More guns did not equate to more crime, in other words, but Lula is still targeting the growing number of legal gun owners in Brazil and imposing severe restrictions on their ability to protect themselves from the country’s seemingly endless supply of armed robbers, carjackers, and violent criminals. Even training is going to be difficult for the few lawful gun owners who’ll remain under Lula’s new restrictions, with ammunition possession capped at 50 rounds. Most of us will shoot far more than that during a typical outing at the range, so not only will there be far fewer lawful gun owners thanks to Lula’s new prohibitions, but those that are left will be less competent than they should be thanks to the gun and ammo rationing implemented via executive order.

The U.S. gun control lobby would love to take a page from Lula’s playbook and install these same restrictions here at home. That may be off the table for the moment, but if Democrats capture both chambers of Congress and keep control of the White House next year there’ll be a major push to pack the Supreme Court full of anti-gun justices who will repeal the Heller decision in short order, allowing for Lula’s restrictions and a host of others to be adopted at the federal, state, and local level. We’re already seeing a preview of this in Massachusetts, where HD 4420 would turn thousands of law-abiding gun owners into felons overnight, and if the prohibitionists get their way next year the courts will be no impediment to their infringements on our fundamental right to keep and bear arms.