In Brazil the punishment for murder is lesser than many other crimes, leading to people murdering investigators (or in one particularly infamous case, a mayor murdered two environmental cops that were going to investigate his farm, got convicted, but still got re-elected).
Also firing a gun and not hitting anything also has a harsher punishment than hitting someone, so unless you are a cop that need to draw attention or something, if you need to fire a gun, you need to make sure you will hit someone.
You don't need a research paper to see the similarities. Both are low trust societies with a strong focus on a clan mentality needed for protection from the aforementioned low trust society i.e. bribing officials high and low, using family connections to get access to jobs, real food and real medicine; and so on
When I think about it, I feel that it's one of the reasons that Asian family ties tend to weaken when they migrate to the West. Societal trust is a lot higher here so there's less need to rely on your family.
关系 is important everywhere, but it's way more important in low trust societies.
Also firing a gun and not hitting anything also has a harsher punishment than hitting someone, so unless you are a cop that need to draw attention or something, if you need to fire a gun, you need to make sure you will hit someone.