Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has suspended a virtual-court judgment on whether municipal civil guards should continue to meet specific federal requirements before carrying firearms.
The case, reported by Gazeta do Povo, is an action of unconstitutionality before the Supreme Federal Court, known as the STF, Brazil’s highest court. It is being handled by Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, who has voted to uphold the current rules. Moraes filed a request for more time to review the case on Sunday, May 31, pausing the proceeding. Under court rules, he has up to 90 days to return it to the virtual plenary.
The dispute concerns Brazil’s Disarmament Statute, a 2003 law that regulates civilian gun ownership and firearm possession by public agents. Associations representing municipal guards argue that the current regime imposes requirements on them that do not apply in the same way to the Armed Forces or police forces.
The groups want guards to be exempted from presenting negative criminal-record certificates, proof of lawful occupation, proof of fixed residence, and certificates of technical capacity and psychological fitness for handling firearms. They also challenge provisions that condition firearm authorization on specific police-style training, internal oversight mechanisms and supervision by the Justice Ministry.
The action was filed by the National Association for Advanced Studies in Municipal Guarding, the Association of Municipal Guards of Brazil and the Municipal Guards’ Union of Campo Grande. Their argument rests partly on the STF’s own case law: the court has already recognized municipal guards as part of Brazil’s public-security system.
That earlier line of cases matters because the court has already struck down population-based limits on firearm possession by municipal guards. In 2018, Moraes issued an injunction suspending parts of the Disarmament Statute that barred guards in cities with fewer than 50,000 residents from carrying firearms and allowed guards in cities between 50,000 and 500,000 residents to do so only while on duty. The STF later considered related actions, including ADC 38 and ADIs 5,538 and 5,948, over those restrictions.
Moraes’s reasoning at the time was that the law treated similar public-security agents differently based only on the population of their municipality. The STF’s own news service said he found that distinction inconsistent with equality and efficiency principles, noting that municipal guards participate in public security and that crime levels are not determined simply by city size.
The current case is narrower. It does not ask whether guards in smaller municipalities may carry firearms. It asks whether the federal government may still require additional documentation, training and oversight before municipal guards obtain authorization.
Nunes Marques has taken the view that the requirements are constitutional. According to Gazeta do Povo, he distinguished them from the population-based limits already rejected by the court, saying the current rules apply equally to municipalities and set minimum national standards for training, control and inspection. He also noted that each municipality may decide whether to arm its guard force, or even whether to maintain one.
The Federal Police’s public guidance for municipal guards says guards authorized to carry firearms must present identity documents, proof of active service, negative criminal-record certificates, proof of residence, a psychological-fitness report and technical-capacity certification. The same guidance notes that, because of the STF injunction in ADI 5,948, municipal guards may acquire firearms regardless of the size of the municipality while the injunction remains in force.
The paused judgment will determine whether the court extends its earlier equality-based reasoning to the remaining regulatory conditions, or whether it accepts Nunes Marques’s view that firearm authorization may still be tied to uniform federal safeguards.