BRASILIA, July 6 (Xinhua) -- Brazil has collected 9,160 weapons and 30,900 units of ammunition during the first two months of a national disarmament campaign, Justice Ministry said.
To encourage civilian cooperation, an equivalent of 65 U.S. dollars to 190 dollars was paid for each weapon, it said. The government has so far distributed about 535,000 dollars during the two months.
The 38-caliber guns topped the list of weapons received by the Federal Police and the Federal Highway Police, with 2,436 units collected, followed by 1,110 units of 32-caliber revolvers.
In addition, 32 rifles, two machine guns and four submachine guns were turned over to the authorities.
Although the campaign ends on Dec. 31, voluntary surrender of weapons is welcome afterwards. But the financial compensation will last only till the end of the year. The authorities have posted a list of weapon-collecting sites on the Internet.
In February, Brazilian Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo announced the government's decision to resume the disarmament campaign. He also presented violence statistics for the 1998-2008 period, which showed that 50,113 people were murdered in Brazil in 2008 alone.
Cardozo said that murder statistics dropped after the last civil disarmament campaign in 2004 and he expected the same thing to happen now.
