Pubdate: Mon, 23 Jan 2006
Source: Hamilton Spectator (CN ON)
Copyright: 2006 The Hamilton Spectator
Contact:  http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/181
Author: Thomas Froese, Special to the Spectator
Note: Thomas Froese appears every other Monday. He was invited to speak on 
journalism and society at a congress at the Universidade Federal de Vicosa.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

STUDENTS SEEK SOLUTIONS, WHILE GUNS IN BRAZIL CONTINUE TO KILL

VICOSA, BRAZIL - Here's a thought for today: BANG! You've been shot. Shot 
through the heart. Can you imagine it?

Your body is warm as blood pours from it, but you feel so cold. There are 
screams. Someone tries to lift you, but all you feel is your last breath 
leaving like air from a punctured tire. Your eyes roll back. All goes 
black. And that's it. You're dead.

Such a waste. The bullet wasn't even meant for you. Or maybe it was. It 
doesn't really matter. Such are the streets of Brazil, a place that gives 
perspective to gun problems in the Toronto and Hamilton regions.

This country of 185 million has an incredible 40,000 gun murders annually, 
one every 12 minutes. That rate is falling, but it's still higher than in 
the United States and among the highest globally.

Teeming cities like Rio or Sao Paulo, over 16 million itself, are brutal. 
Guns and drugs mix. Life is cheap and death is senseless. "You hurt my 
feelings," or "You're on my turf," and BANG!

Even here in Vicosa, a university town of 70,000, just before Toronto's 
Boxing Day gun shocker, a professor was shot dead as he was getting his 
daughter from a grad party.

I'm talking about it all with Carluci Dossantos at the Universidade Federal 
de Vicosa. He's among 900 Christian university students from Brazil and 
beyond, attending a congress here to talk about their future careers, and 
how to engage and heal their society. To take part, some have travelled for 
days.

Nearby, one student wears a T-shirt, one of the few in English, reading, "I 
would die tonight for my beliefs." In a culture of violence, the irony fits 
all too well.

Dossantos, a Brazilian PhD student of theology at the University of 
Toronto, tells me about Brazil's slums, its poor infrastructure and its 
need of public programs. He's amazed at the free activities that his kids 
can access in their Toronto public schools. In Brazil, that's only for the 
rich.

Just 16 per cent of Brazilians now graduate from high school, and 7 per 
cent from university. Experts say besides death itself, youth here fear 
being disconnected in a techno-age, and being left behind in a competitive 
market.

What strikes me about Dossantos is his observation that many youth in the 
Millennial Generation, whether Brazilian or Canadian, simply crave love, 
something no amount of legislation or public campaigns can give.

"The government and community can expose the horror of guns, like it does 
with drunk driving. An agency can take a kid from a bad home. But it can't 
love them. It can't make a family love a kid," Dossantos says. "But we can 
love them."

Guns and broken homes are core issues that are too often minimized, he 
says. Fatherless boys, orphaned in spirit, are ripe for the street.

Listening, one also realizes there are people in faith communities willing 
to live for their beliefs, not only, as the nearby T-shirt says, to die for 
them. And while it may irritate secular sensibilities, their expertise and 
involvement should be in the mix.

The so-called Boston Miracle, which saw Boston's murders plunge by 75 per 
cent in the 1990s when pastors initiated street programs with police and 
politicians, is a success some Torontonians are now arguing against. Why?

Of course gun owners -- in Brazil, they're officially 3.5 per cent of 
households -- have beliefs of their own. In fact, thanks to the gun lobby 
and its clever lawyers, a recent national referendum supported continued 
sales of guns countrywide.

Brazilians wanted protection against the hoods, and they didn't want to 
relinquish their rights. They also took the opportunity to thumb the 
government, a lesson, maybe, regarding similar gun ban ideas in Canada.

So, back to BANG! You've been shot. Shot through your heart. Can you really 
imagine it? No, most Canadians, even now, can't. It's too far removed from 
our collective experience. For this we can be thankful. But if we want to 
keep it that way, we absolutely will need to pull together. Because with 
easy guns in hand, the Grim Reaper doesn't really care where he is. Or 
who's next.

- ---

Thomas Froese appears every other Monday. He was invited to speak on 
journalism and society at a congress at the Universidade Federal de Vicosa. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D