The State admits that it lost control over the sale of ammunition

By Ashley Benavidez

You don't need to be a ballistics specialist to understand that something is not going well in Uruguay. In recent years, the number of shell casings that the Police collect at each crime scene in Montevideo and the metropolitan area is a frightening number. However, while the public debate focused on whether there were more patrol officers or whether the sentences were short, the ammunition market operated with astonishing lightness.

Until today, buying a box of bullets in some stores was little more than a neighborhood store procedure. This week, the official voice finally admitted what every sectional commissioner had been muttering under his breath: there is a black hole in the system. Control is poor at best.

The parallel market that the State did not see

The recognition comes late, almost like an echo of the shootings that have already become part of the daily landscape in neighborhoods like Marconi or Casavalle. The lack of strict registration about who buys what, and what they use it for, has allowed the formal ammunition market to become, indirectly, the main supplier of the black market.

How did thousands of projectiles get into the hands of teenagers who don't even have a weapons permit? The answer is on the shelves of gun stores that, under the excuse of legal sales, fed a constant drip system to criminal organizations. It is a circuit that, until now, the State viewed with a blindness that is difficult to justify.

Rush measures in the face of urgency

The announcement of new regulatory measures has a “firefighter” flavor: the fire is put out when the house already has scorched foundations. The idea is to tighten controls, cross-check buyer data with background information and limit the amount of ammunition that a civilian can purchase.

But on the street, skepticism is common. A resident of a peripheral neighborhood sums it up crudely: “The bullets are already in the street, you are not going to remove them with a decree.” And he is right. The problem is not only the future sale, it is the ability that the Ministry of the Interior will have to audit the stock that is already dispersed, hidden in shoe boxes under beds or in the chargers of those who today impose their law on shooting.

The political responsibility behind the trigger

It is easy to target the criminal who pulls the trigger. But the background to this story is a management failure. For years, ammunition control was allowed to be a minor administrative issue, when in reality it was a matter of national security. The confession that rigorous control is lacking is not a minor fact; It is the validation that the State, at some point, gave free rein to violence by not controlling the raw material of death.

Now, the question is whether these measures will be part of a comprehensive security policy or if they will simply end up being another provision filed in a drawer. Uruguayan society, tired of counting deaths and seeing how police news takes up most of the news, expects something more than an admission of guilt. You need results.

an open wound

Insecurity is not resolved with laws alone, but the lack of them was fertile ground for chaos to grow. Admitting failure is the first step, yes, but it is a step that comes loaded with frustration. On every block where booms are heard today, the neighbor knows that that bullet did not appear out of nowhere. It appeared thanks to a system that allowed anyone, with a little money, to buy a box of projectiles.

Now that ammunition control is under the spotlight, the magnifying glass must also fall on those who allowed this lack of control to be the norm. Because in politics, as in the street, omission is also a form of complicity. And while the Ministry of the Interior tightens the screws of regulation, in the neighborhoods where gunpowder is breathed, time continues to run against those who only want to live in peace.