Brazil has soundly rejected a proposal to ban the sale of guns in a national referendum yesterday.
Brazil has 100 million fewer citizens than the United States, but a staggering 25 per cent more gun deaths at nearly 40,000 a year.
Supporters argued that gun control was the best way to staunch the violence, but opponents played on Brazilians' fears that the police can't protect them.
With more than 92 per cent of the votes counted, 64 per cent of Brazilians were opposed to the ban, while 36 per cent backed it, election officials said.
The proposal would have prohibited the sale of firearms and ammunition except for police, the military, some security guards, gun collectors and sports shooters. It would have complemented a 2003 disarmament law that sharply restricts who can legally purchase firearms and carry guns in the street.
That law, coupled with a government-sponsored gun buyback programme, has reduced deaths from firearms by about 8 per cent this year, the Health Ministry said.
Earlier this year, support for the ban was running as high as 80 per cent. But in the weeks before the referendum, both sides were granted free time to present their cases on prime-time TV, and the pro-gun lobby began to grow.
Analysts said the pro-gun lobby benefited from equal time on television in the final weeks of the campaign and that they cannily cashed in on Brazilian scepticism of the police.