Brazil’s new President Jair Bolsonaro notes that “hoodlums already have guns” and demands changes to level the playing field by allowing law-abiding citizens better access to firearms for self-defense.

In fact, on December 30, 2018, Breitbart News reported that Bolsonaro announced that he will decree protections on the people’s right to own guns so as to turn the tide on criminals who have spent years preying on the defenseless. He tweeted: “By decree we intend to guarantee the POSSE of firearm for the citizen without criminal antecedents, as well as make its registration definitive.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Brazilians who are yearning for the change Bolsonaro’s personifies.

For example, Claudio Sotero Júnior owns a store “selling bodybuilding supplements.” He has had the store for 12 years and “has been robbed at gunpoint six times since … 2006.” And three years ago, Sotero Junior “had to give up teaching kickboxing classes to pick up his wife from work every day after gunmen robbed and sexually assaulted her at a bus stop.”

He said he wishes he could own a Glock handgun. Sotero Junior observed, “It’s not fair, we’ve become hostages in our own country, we can’t take it anymore.”

A 47-year-old sales executive named Ricardo Gouvea echoed Sotero Junior’s sentiment, saying, “No one feels safe any more … anywhere in Brazil. Everyone has a right to defend themselves.”

On December 14, 2018, Breitbart News reported Venezuelans lamented the draconian gun controls put in place by Hugo Chavez in 2012. Fox News spoke to Javier Vanegas, a Venezuelan English teacher now living in Ecuador. Vanegas said, “Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight. The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.”

Bolsonaro is determined that law-abiding Brazilians will be spared the plight Venezuelans are facing.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.