New gun club opens every day in Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil as weapons become key election issue
It is a quiet street in a fairly tough part of Sao Paulo, but the sound of high velocity weapons firing and the thud of rounds impacting every few seconds is somewhat disconcerting.
We ring the doorbell of an innocuous-looking building; after a few minutes the thick metal door opens, and we are greeted by a man wearing a smart black jacket over body armour.
He motions us inside and the door shuts. In front of us, another metal door slides open and the sound of shooting greets us through a cloud of barbecue-smelling smoke.
This is the G-16 gun club and it’s open 24 hours a day. It’s lunchtime and the BBQ, included in the membership fee, is on outside.
In the Brazil of President Jair Bolsonaro, gun clubs have been opening at the astonishing rate of one a day for the past four years.
The atmosphere is friendly but businesslike. At desks people fill out their forms for gun licences. Milling about, with pistols in holsters and dressed in military gear, the members and trainers prepare for the firing ranges dotted about the building.
Machine guns line the walls and handguns sit on display cabinets.
A young woman explains that people with licences can buy and take away the handguns, but they have to order the assault rifles.
“Or you can borrow them while you’re here and use them on the range,” she adds with a beaming smile.
Private gun ownership has rocketed under the right-wing government of Mr Bolsonaro.
He and his supporters contest that bearing arms is a fundamental right, although, unlike the United States, this isn’t actually mentioned in Brazil’s constitution.
‘Bolsonaro is a gun enthusiast’
The burly owner of the G-16 club, Gustavo Pazzini, is proud of how much his business has grown in the past few years. He started with one club, and he now has four with 12,000 members.
He is an unabashed Bolsonaro supporter – the president’s picture hangs in the club’s foyer.
“Bolsonaro is a gun enthusiast, a military man, a pro-freedom politician, and he managed to make some changes, and this has generally heated up the market, and it has rekindled the dreams of Brazilians who are gun enthusiasts and like guns.”
It’s a big booming growth sector and is another key issue in this desperately tight election battle.
Brazilians will head to the polls next Sunday for a second round vote after both Mr Bolsonaro and his rival Lula da Silva failed to secure enough votes for an outright win.
The highly polarised vote will determine whether the country returns a leftist to the helm of the world’s fourth-biggest democracy or keeps the far-right leader in office for another four years.
In what is arguably the country’s most critical election since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985, Mr da Silva of the leftist Workers’ Party won 48.26% of votes and Mr Bolsonaro secured 43.34%.
The owner of the G-16 club, Gustavo Pazzini
Threat of election-linked violence
An hour or so outside Sao Paulo, we pulled off the main road and drove towards a series of port-a-cabins on the edge of a big open space.
Even in our car the sound of machine gun fire, pump action shotguns and revolvers was really loud.
This is the Assault shooting range, a sort-of country club for amateur gun users and a training ground for police and more serious gun club enthusiasts dressed in matching uniforms, keen to learn battlefield craft like the military.
There is fear that Bolsonaro-supporting groups will fashion themselves on America’s Trump-supporting gun carriers.
That fear has been highlighted by the closeness of the election and the threat of election-linked violence.
But a day out at the Assault shooting range is also something of a family affair.
The Stopa family together on the shooting range
‘I think it’s cool’
All the generations of the Stopa family are on the range with a variety of weapons and an instructor showing them how to use them all.
Eighteen-year-old Georgia is firing a weapon for the first time today.
“I think it’s so cool, I’m very happy,” she told us excitedly after firing the shotgun.
Her proud mum took pictures the whole time.
Their instructor is deadly serious but there are laughs and smiles throughout the lesson.
The Assault club’s owner, a former police officer, has no doubts that anything but a Bolsonaro win will be bad for him and his business.
President Bolsonaro has used executive powers to relax the country’s previously stringent gun laws imposed by his electoral adversary Mr da Silva.
“People worry about Lula’s return to government, of course, if his first attitude is to disarm the population. The more insecure, the more disarmed and the more illiterate the population is, the better it is for them,” the club owner explained to me.
On our way back from Assault, we stopped off at one of the country’s biggest gun shops.
ISA comes complete with an upscale café restaurant and is pristine inside, with mood lighting and glass cabinets full of gleaming weapons of every description.
Clovis Aguiar shows off weapons he has imported
This is a very successful business, and it has blossomed under Mr Bolsonaro.
The gun shop’s owner told us he clears £1.7m every month.
Clovis Aguiar showed Jorge Seif, a Bolsonaro-supporting senator who is a big player in politics here, weapons he has imported from his factory in Israel.
I asked the senator if he would like one of the weapons – yes, he enthusiastically replied, laughing.
Senator Jorge Seif is confident of election victory
Mr Seif is confident that Mr Bolsonaro will win, and says if he does, and they control the senate, they will change the gun laws permanently.
“When a socialist government, a dictator government, an oppressive government comes to power, their first action is to disarm the population,” he said, referring to Lula da Silva’s Worker’s Party.
“But President Bolsonaro shows his commitment to the Brazilian people, right? Above all he respects democracy because he trusts his population when he gives them the right to buy firearms.”
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Mr da Silva and his supporters say that having more guns in a country that already has a terrible record for crime is at best reckless.
Mr Bolsonaro’s followers disagree, arguing guns allow people to protect themselves.
Like so many things in this election, they will never agree.
Thousands of troops are taking part in a joint military exercise between Russia and Belarus, as tensions with the EU run high following a Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace earlier this week.
The Zapad joint military exercise which began on Friday will involve drills in both Russia and Belarus as well as in the Baltic and Barents seas, the Russian defence ministry said.
Belarusian defence officials initially said about 13,000 troops would participate in the drill, but in May, its defence ministry said that would be cut nearly in half.
It comes just two days after Poland, with support from its NATO allies, shot down Russian drones over its airspace.
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Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Friday morning hit back at a suggestion by US President Donald Trump on Thursday that the incursion may have been a “mistake”.
He said in a post on X: “We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t. And we know it.”
Russia said its forces had been attacking Ukraine at the time of the incursions and that it had not intended to hit any targets in Poland.
Friday also saw Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper travelling to Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv on the same day the UK announced fresh sanctions against Moscow.
Prince Harry was also in Kyiv for a surprise visit to help with the recovery of military personnel seriously injured in the three-year war with Russia.
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Prince Harry arrives in Kyiv
Ms Cooper, who was appointed foreign secretary last week, posted about her visit on X saying: “The UK’s support for Ukraine is steadfast. I am pleased to be in Kyiv on my first visit as Foreign Secretary.”
The UK’s new sanctions include bans on 70 vessels that Britain says are part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” that transports Russian oil in defiance of sanctions already in place.
Yvette Cooper with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. Pic: Valentyn Ogirenko/PA
Some 30 individuals and companies – including Chinese and Turkey-based firms – have also been sanctioned for their part in supplying Russia with electronics, chemicals, explosives and other weapons components.
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Meanwhile on the frontline, Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s oil-loading Primorsk port overnight, an SBU official said.
The attack caused fires and suspended oil-loading operations, the official added.
Russian defence systems also intercepted and destroyed 221 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Prince Harry has made a surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, a spokesperson for the royal has said.
Harry, who served 10 years in the British Army, visited the city at the invitation of the Ukrainian government.
The Duke of Sussex travelled to the capital to help with the recovery of military personnel seriously injured in the three-year war with Russia.
Pic: Railway of Ukraine Ukrzaliznytsia/AP
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper will also be travelling to Kyiv on Friday in what will be her first foreign trip since being appointed to the job last week.
Her visit coincides with the UK launching a new package of Russia-related sanctions targeting ships carrying Russian oil as well as companies and individuals supplying electronics, chemicals and explosives used to make Russian weapons.
It comes as Russia and Belarus began a major joint military exercise on on NATO’s doorstep on Friday, just two days after Poland, with support from its NATO allies, shot down suspected Russian drones over its airspace.
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Drones shot down in Poland
The Zapad-2025 exercise – a show of force by Russia and its close ally – will involve drills in both countries and in the Baltic and Barents seas, the Russian defence ministry said.
Meanwhile on the frontline, Russian defence systems intercepted and destroyed 221 Ukrainian drones overnight,
including nine over the Moscow region, the ministry said on Friday.
The duke told the Guardian while on an overnight train to Kyiv: “We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process.
“We can continue to humanise the people involved in this war and what they are going through.
“We have to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds. I hope this trip will help to bring it home to people because it’s easy to become desensitised to what has been going on.”
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Harry, who served two tours in Afghanistan, previously travelled to Ukraine in April, when he visited war victims as part of his work with wounded veterans.
The prince visited the Superhumans Center, an orthopaedic clinic in Lviv that treats and rehabilitates wounded military personnel and civilians.
Earlier this week, Harry said the King is “great” after he reunited with him at Clarence House for a private tea.
It was their first meeting in 19 months and lasted just 54 minutes.
The last time the father and son saw each other was in February 2024 when the prince flew to the UK after the monarch announced his cancer diagnosis.
Harry and his wife Meghan Markle have lived in California since they quit roles as senior working royals in March 2020.
Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison for attempting a coup to stay in power after his 2022 election defeat.
The far-right politician, who ruled Brazil between 2019 and 2022, is currently under house arrest in the capital, Brasilia.
A panel of five Supreme Court justices handed down the sentence several hours after they found the 70-year-old guilty on five counts.
The counts were trying to stage a coup, being part of an armed criminal organisation, attempting violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, being implicated in violence, and posing a serious threat to the state’s assets and listed heritage.
Bolsonaro‘s lawyers have said they will appeal the verdict.
Pic: AP
The ruling will deepen political divisions in Brazil and is also likely to prompt a backlash from the United States government – with Donald Trump already sharing his thoughts on the vote.
President Trump, an ally of Bolsonaro, has said he was surprised and “very unhappy” with the decision.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, he said he always found Bolsonaro “outstanding” and said the conviction is “very bad for Brazil”.
Mr Trump previously called the case a “witch hunt”, slapped Brazil with tariff hikes, and revoked US visas for most members of Brazil’s high court.
Bolsonaro is the first former Brazilian president to be convicted of attempting a coup.
He has not attended the court proceedings, and on Thursday, he was seen at the garage of his property, but did not talk to the media.
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Justice Carmen Lucia. Pic: AP
Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has been overseeing the case, said on Tuesday that Bolsonaro was the leader of a coup plot and of a criminal organisation, and voted in favour of convicting him. Justices Flavio Dino, Carmen Lucia, and Cristiano Zanin sided with Justice Moraes in the trial.
On Wednesday, another justice, Luiz Fux, disagreed and voted to acquit the ex-president of all charges.
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Justice Lucia said she was convinced by the evidence the attorney general’s office put forward against Bolsonaro, saying: “He is the instigator, the leader of an organisation that orchestrated every possible move to maintain or seize power.”
Bolsonaro had been previously banned from running for office until 2030 in a different case.
He is expected to choose an heir who is likely to challenge President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva next year.
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