Market devices: the case of the allowed firearms market in Brazil

Abstract

The analysis of the allowed firearms market in Brazil, considering that it is a contested market, that is, a market where its logic penetrates sensitive areas such as people's privacy, integrity, health, or the capacity to maintain public order (STEINER and TRESPEUCH, 2014), brings the prospect of disputes around a force field that makes the expansion, closing or even banning of the market always on the horizon of possible. The strategy adopted to understand this oscillation involves the apprehension of devices capable of connecting objects, people, rules (not only legal) which by their action define the extent and possibilities of the market (STEINER and TRESPEUCH, 2014), As an example of this oscillation, in 2003 there was the approval of the Disarmament Statute, a prohibitive legal norm approved in a very peculiar context (protests in favor of arms regulation, recent election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) and, in opposition, the recent Decrees issued by the Government of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, greatly expanding the arms market, meeting the campaign promise made from the first moment of his candidacy. Moreover, the containment (prohibition) or cooling (enlargement) devices of the market cannot, by themselves, explain the applied logic since the arms market has a peculiarity in relation to the markets previously studied under the category of In contested markets, in this case, the arms market has a historical aspect, in other words, if a prohibitive norm emerges, as was the case with the Disarmament Statute, the reality after the norm remains as the reality before it, the people who owned guns continue to own them, that is, the ban acts as a strategy for denying access to new weapons, but it is not able to make the reality produced by the market disappear. Contact with researchers from other contested markets, as well as a second approach to the firearms market devices in France, will allow us to broaden the understanding of the application of the device concept in the studied market, as well as to understand the peculiarities of the arms market. that cannot be undone by a simple touch of the Law. (AU)