China Tries to Target Black Market Guns
The Wall Street Journal is about the only mainstream media outlet picking up on story that was first reported in China Daily this week on how authorities in China are cracking down on illegal guns. It should be stressed that in China almost all guns are essentially banned, but there has been a stark increase of the number of illegal guns being produced domestically. Read more
Asia Times Offers Insight on Chinese Gun Laws
The usual argument by liberals and other anti-gun zealots is that if you get rid of the guns, crime will follow. After all, the argument is made, without guns there can be no way to shoot each other. So close the gun show loopholes, ban handguns, tax ammunition, make it impossible to own a gun. But time and time again the anti-gun zealots are wrong. Gun sales are up, crime is down should be proof enough. But alas, it isn’t.
So let’s look at the situation in China. As reported by the Asia Times Online, it is noted that since 1966 China has banned the sale, private manufacture, possession and even import and export of bullets and guns. The exception is for government owned companies that can export firearms. But the point is that individuals in China, the land that invented gunpowder by the way, cannot own guns. The news site offers this statement on the harshness of the penalties for those who break the law:
“Possessing a single gun can yield a three-year prison sentence, while perpetrators of gun crimes are often executed.”
We would stress that this is a three-year prison sentence in China, not some country club jail either. A three-year sentence would likely be a hellish time indeed. So clearly gun crime must be non-existent, but alas this isn’t the case. Asia Times Online notes:
“Yet despite harsh penalties, China’s Ministry of Public Safety (MPS) has said it increasingly faces armed suspects. In the most recent high-profile case last month, a security guard in Hunan province in southerly China, apparently upset by a court-imposed divorce settlement, shot and killed three judges and wounded three others before turning the gun on himself.
“It was not an isolated incident. In early 2007, a man in northeast China killed five family members and neighbors in a rampage with a homemade pistol. In September 2007, a man in Guangzhou city in southern China was sentenced to 19 years after using a replica gun to rob a bank customer. And in December 2008, a guard at a munitions depot shot and killed a colleague over a chess match, and was shot to death himself by police two days later.”
The news site further notes that guns are routinely smuggled into China, even as the nation is one of the largest gun manufacturers in the world. So the point of all this is that criminals will always find a way to get guns, and law-abiding citizens shouldn’t be punished as a result. Guns are not the problem; it is the criminals with those guns that are the real problem, and tackling crime should be where energy is spent. Not making new laws or trying to turn law-abiding citizens into criminals.
International Media Believes U.S. Fueling Illegal Arms Trade
Turn on the news of conflicts around the world and you’re likely to see the Soviet designed AK-47 time and time again. But surprisingly the United States, not the former Soviet Union, now gets the lion’s share of the blame for supplying the world with illegal firearms.
In an editorial posted by Jamaica Gleaner News on recent violence in Haiti the writers called out the United States for supplying guns to Mexican cartels. Fortunately, at least, the article didn’t see the United States in this alone:
Jamaica and her CARICOM partners should invite gun manufacturing countries such as the United States, China and Russia to a summit on small arms
This is an interesting opinion, but would Russia care – should Russia even care – about the weapons that were sold during the Cold War by the former Soviet Union? And what would a summit really mean?
Chinese Media Pick Up on Event Ignored by U.S. Media
Leave it to the Chinese to pick up on an event that the American media has so far largely ignored. Chinaview.com noted that in New York there was a large anti-gun demonstration, just the sort of event that the biased media in the states should love to cover:
“Anti-gun activists, city leaders and victims of shootings gathered in Times Square of New York City Monday afternoon, demanding an end to gun violence as part of National Day of Outrage.”
Of course maybe the media stayed away as this event was sponsored by the notoriously outspoken Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network. It is interesting that the Chinese media sees America as the wild west, especially given that in a nation where no guns are allowed in the hands of private citizens, tens of thousands have been confiscated since April!
Mexico and Canada Still in the News, What About Europe and Asia?
Throughout the summer the American mainstream media took time to report on how American made firearms were supposedly fueling a drug war in Mexico, while the incidents of shootings in Canada was about because of American hardware.
Meanwhile, very little has been picked up in the States on the thousands of firearms seized in Australia and China – two nations were gun ownership is either difficult or impossible. For the record, private gun ownership in Communist China is entirely banned. And at the same time, unfortunately crime is up in the U.K., with cities like Manchester seeing a significant increase in gun crime in the past decade. However, this hardly gets any play in the United States.
The reason is likely crystal clear. In China, and in the U.K., it isn’t American guns that are in the hands of criminals. So for the MSM there is no story.
Chinese Police Seize 50,000 Guns!
We’ve reported on this before, but it is in the mainstream media again – unfortunately ONLY in the mainstream media in China as the Western media seems not to notice. Police in China have seized more than 50,000 guns in a crackdown that began in March and will continue to China’s October 1 National Day celebration. But it isn’t just guns either reports the Window of China news organization:
“Chinese police have confiscated more than 50,000 guns and nearly 900 tonnes of explosives in a crackdown during the past five months, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said Thursday. Nearly 10,000 suspects have been arrested.”
This is again notable because in China possession of any firearm is illegal. If it is possible for so many guns to be in private hands in a Communist state that controls the media, and has limited infrastructure with roads and rails, how can anyone in the United States believe that criminals here wouldn’t also manage to find guns?
Chinese Government Seizes 19,000 Firearms in Four Months
Private ownership of firearms is illegal in China. Let me repeat that statement: PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF FIREARMS IS ILLEGAL IN CHINA. Yet in four months, the Chinese government seized 19,000 guns. According to the China View news agency, it was NOT just firearms that were seized either:
“Chinese police have confiscated 19,000 guns and close to 500 tonnes of explosives in a crackdown on explosive and gun-related crimes in the last four months, the Ministry of Public Security announced here Monday.”
But that’s not all folks, the story adds:
“Police also confiscated close to 1.47 million detonators, 800,000 bullets and 39,000 imitation guns.”
