Illegal guns: booming business & fatal problem

• Source: The Global Times
• [07:41 May 25 2009]
• Comments

Police in Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang Province, prepare to destroy a haul of 375 illegal guns and more than 300 knives last year. Although it is illegal for civilians to own guns in China, crime involving firearms has been on the rise in recent years. Photo: Xinhua

By Li Xiaoshu and Wen Ya 
 
A man was shot Friday in front of a restaurant near the north gate of Hengchang garden in Beijing’s Xuanwu district, the Beijing News reported yesterday.

A witness said the incident happened at about 11:50 pm at a food stall in front of the restaurant.

“A big man wearing a white hat shot another man,” the report quoted a man surnamed Gao as saying.

“I heard two people calling the wounded man ‘Boss.’”

After the shooting, the gunman jumped into a white BMW, reversed it at high speed, collided with another vehicle and then drove away.”

Another witness was quoted as saying police found a shell of a P-64 at scene and detained about 10 people who were in the restaurant.

The Beijing Public Security Bureau said police had identified the suspect and the pistol involved, the report said.

Chen Tianben, an associate professor at the Chinese People’s Public Security University, told the Global Times yesterday that the shooting reflects a “rising social tension” and “inherent problems” of the nation’s gun control system.

China has enacted its current law on gun control in 1996. It forbids the private manufacture, sale, transport, possession, import or export of bullets and guns, including replicas.

Those found guilty of selling, manufacturing or possessing guns face penalties ranging from three years’ jail to the death penalty.

Despite the law, there has been a rapid rise in gun crime in recent years.

In the first six months of last year, some 4,600 cases were handled, almost double the number for the whole of 2007, the Ministry of Public Security said.

Some 79,000 illegal firearms were confiscated last year, three times as many as in 2007, it said.

In March, the ministry launched a campaign to “significantly reduce” gun-related crime.

Good business

“Give me a table, and some pieces of steel, wood and coil springs, and I’ll make you a gun, ” Deng Xiangjing, a police officer from Chongqing, said an illegal gun maker once told him. Deng, who has been involved in a number of missions to confiscate illegal firearms, told the Global Times yesterday that homemade shotguns and handguns from Guizhou and Yunnan provinces are increasingly being used in robberies and murders.

“Most of the guns confiscated from village workshops in rural Chongqing are shotguns,” he said.

“They can also make handguns that are very similar to standard guns.”

Zhong Chengyong, who was tried in March for making 44 guns in a secret workshop in Lianjiang, Guangdong Province, said he could make one pistol every two hours using digital technology, police said at the time.

Although the guns cost less than 300 yuan ($44) to make, they easily sell for at least 3,000 yuan, a man surnamed Wu from Guizhou said in July.

In Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, guns can sell for 8,000 yuan each, while a gun-maker surnamed Yang from Guizhou Province said his weapons sold for 1,500 yuan each and that he had made 30 rifles and 329 bullets, Law and News, a monthly magazine from the Ministry of Justice, reported in February.

Du Zhixiong, research department director of the Rural Development Institute of he Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that cracking down on gun production workshops may not eliminate the problem and that a comprehensive plan to tackle poverty in these areas was needed.

“The government must strengthen its publicity on illegal guns in rural areas, ” he said.

Tricky problem

In the execution of the criminal law, courts should impose higher fines on those who make and sell guns illegally, Chen, the associate professor at the Chinese People’s Public Security University, told the Global Times yesterday.

“The current penalties are light. We should set a fine and then raise it according to the illegal income of the criminals,” he said.

“It will increase their costs and give them a warning.”

The gun situation in China is different than in some other countries, as the country does not allow people to possess or sell guns, unlike in the US, Chen said.

“With the convenient communication and exchange with the outside world, criminals have more channels to access guns. It’s difficult for us to plug all the channels,” he said.