New law means shops in federal district of Brazil selling toy or replica guns will be subject to fines, closure or licence loss

The federal district of Brazil is to ban all toy and replica guns under a new law designed to help reduce violent crime.

From 2014, shops selling toy or replica guns in Brasília, in the federal district of Brazil, will face fines of 5,000-100,000 real (£1,400-£28,000), be closed for 30 days or lose their trading licence.

"It is in search of a new culture, one of non-violence, that has to come from our children," said Valéria de Velasco, minister for the protection of victims of violence in the state government. "It is a work of transformation and of cultural transformation. Toy guns don't kill, but they symbolise an attitude."

De Velasco developed the law as part of a wider series of public policy actions designed to reduce violence and "construct a new culture – the culture of peace".

The federal district is the first part of Brazilian to pass such a law, despite rising murder rates in a country where violent crime is widespread and many inhabitants have been victims of some kind of armed assault.

In just two months, Brazil has seen five cases of entire families being murdered.

According to a recent study by the Brazilian centre for Latin-American studies (Cebela) in Rio de Janeiro, the homicide rate in Brazil rose from 24.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1996 to 27.1 per 100,000 in 2011. Cebela produces an annual map of violence in Brazil.

De Velasco ran a pilot scheme in 11 schools earlier this year in Ceilândia, one of Brasília's poorest and most violent satellite towns, home to many workers in the city's service industries.

The city saw 119 homicides in 2012, in a population of 350,000.

In the scheme children were encouraged to produce anti-violence designs and swap toy guns for books.

In total, 502 toy weapons were swapped for books – including replica guns and even toy swords.

"This intervention enforces the importance of this law, how children assimilate new concepts and adopt them as theirs," De Velasco said.

"Children are going to take this discussion to schools, to their families and to the community in general."

Replica guns are also a target of the new law – in 2012, they were used in 12% of armed assaults in the federal district, said De Velasco.

In São Paulo, that rose to 18%. "This is a big number. It shows that bandits are using toy guns to commit violence against the population."

The new law has been widely welcomed, especially by parents.

"I think it's marvellous," said Neide do Nascimento, a domestic maid in Brasília who is a resident of Ceilândia and mother of three children. "This law should have been made before. We lost a lot of time. We lost a lot of lives."

In 2008, Do Nascimento's daugher, Pollyane Araujo, then 17, was a victim of violent crime when she was on a bus in Ceilândia that was robbed by two armed men.

Pollyane was forced to get off the bus by the robbers who held a gun to her head and used her as a shield to get to their getaway vehicle.

Do Nascimento said the law should be expanded to cover violent video games.

"It is absurd. It is a lot of violence. We don't need this. We already have this in real life, unfortunately," she said.

• This article was amended to remove incorrect references to the federal district of Brazil as a state and to Brasília as the capital of the federal district.