Brazil’s problem with murder from firearms has become so out-of-control that even the sleepy U.N. has noticed.

First, some facts:

• Brazil has draconian gun control laws that date to the last century.
• By 2000, Brazil’s gun-related murder rate was nearly four times that of the United States.
• In 2004, President Lula da Silva signed even more-restrictive laws.
• Also in 2004, the government engaged in a massive (and expensive) buy-back program that netted over 80,000 guns.

A U.N. report says that more than half a million Brazilians died from gun-inflicted injuries in the past 24 years — more than four times the number of deaths recorded in the Arab-Israeli conflict during the past 50 years.

In response, the government of Brazil now wants to completely ban the sale of guns. Oh, and by the way:

Over the past year, more than 300,000 weapons have been handed into the police in return for cash as part of a pioneering disarmament scheme.

Sure, ’cause the whole “take guns away” seems to be working soooo well for you.

It looks like I’ll have to turn my four-part series addressing the banning of guns into a five-parter. (The first post, Crime in Britain Part 1: Dunblane, Gun Laws and Violence, was made earlier today.)

On a totally unrelated note, AlphaPatriot is the top hit when searching Yahoo for “Brazil gun draconian“. Now if I could only turn that into vast amounts of money . . .