Brazil’s Congress on Tuesday approved stricter gun controls in a nation said to have the world’s highest number of murders. The nation’s Senate passed a bill which allows President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to sign into law some of the strictest gun laws in Latin America, after a six-year fight over the legislation. “The country is going to start to have efficient gun controls, something it’s not had up to today,” Antonio Rangel of Rio de Janeiro anti-violence group Viva Rio told reporters in Congress. Most Brazilians know someone who has been affected by violence. About 45,000 Brazilians are murdered each year, or one person every 12 minutes, giving it the largest number of annual homicides of any country, according to the World Health Organization. Some 40,000 of those deaths are from firearms, most of them unregistered and illegal handguns. Those killed are usually young and poor. Many are from shantytowns in big cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Full Story
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