TRIGGER TABOO

BY TYlER RONEY
ADDlTlONAl RESEARCH BY GlNGER HUANG (黄原竟)

China's effective control of fi rearms and a growing gun culture

虽然中国的禁枪令毫不含糊，但迷恋枪支的人仍在为自己的爱好寻找途径

Counter Strike (CS) fi ghts—in the form of laser tag or paintball—have grown in popularity in recent years in China, and with it a greater esteem for guns and air rif l es. However, naive hobbyists may not realize that even though an air rif l e is far from lethal and often only just teeters on annoying, punishments for possession can still be incredibly weighty. Under Chinese law, a gun is a gun—whether it's powered by gunpowder or compressed air, shoots bullets or BBs. If it's powerful enough to use a small projectile to cause injury, death, or unconsciousness, it can be identif i ed as a real gun in court. By this standard, many Chinese CS enthusiasts are purchasing fake guns with very real consequences. An engineer in Wuhan ordered 1,000 pellets for pellet guns from the US in 2011, getting them through customs by claiming they were steel ball-bearings. The severity of the case leveled against the Wuhan air gun enthusiast became apparent when he realized that he could face life imprisonment or even the death penalty for his impulse buy. Luckily, he was let off with three years in prison and three years ofprobation for this snafu, but the message is clear: China does not take gun crime lightly.

ONlY AROUND FOUR lN EVERY 100 PEOPlE lN CHlNA HAVE ACCESS TO PRlVATE FlREARMS

China has done a pretty good job at keeping guns out of private hands—saving the nation from the horrif i c gun deaths that plague countries like the US. But, despite a severe prohibition, guns are still an integral part of the military, police force, and, yes, even private use. It is fair to say that that gun violence in China is not exactly a grave concern for the average person; only around four in every 100 people in China have access to private fi rearms. Gun violence may be all but stamped out, but that doesn't mean China lacks a small and growing gun culture.

So, where in this severe frontier might one fi nd a gun? Well, the internet of course. If you're looking on Taobao, asking for a gun is asking for trouble, so you won't fi nd many results for 枪, rather, what you want is a dog. Taobao doesn't really deal in actual, traditional fi rearms very often, but the air rif l es—that carry almost as strict a penalty—can be found by searching for “dogs”. An “air dog” is obviously an air rif l e, “air dog food” is for pellets or ammunition for air guns, and sometimes you need to get more specif i c, like, “air dog food for bird hunting”. If you're looking for a “long dog” (rif l e) or “short dog” (handgun) that use gunpowder instead of air pressure, you likely won't fi nd too many merchants on Taobao due to the severe penalties involved.

But, real or fake, when you're talking guns, you're talking Guangdong Province. This area, famed for its industrious cities and Pearl River Delta beauty, is a hotbed of illegal fi rearms manufacturing, leading to around 12,000 criminal cases a year. In 2010, Guangdong police raided an illegal gun factory, the biggest in a decade, to bag more than 113,000 guns that would go on to be sold for 5,000 to 60,000 RMB a piece. This year a somewhat more modest seizure took place with 805 guns and 316,000 replicas seized, but it was alongside a whopping 7.3 million tons of gun powder in the Guangdong Province city of Lufeng. The video bust saw police storming staircases and hallways to arrest their tattooed culprit, afterward video recording half-manufactured revolvers and bullet casings. Later that same summer, a nine-city raid in Guangdong Province yielded 12,000 guns and 41 arrested culprits. In short, Guangdong has a gun problem.

Of course, though Guangdong is the capital of gun manufacturing in China, small arms manufacture can be found in the nooks and crannies of most Chinese cities. These guns make their way into the hands of private buyers online, places a little shadier than Taobao. Enthusiasts must go to gun trading websites, of which there are many. One such website, “Complete Gun Collections”, boasts “professional gun trading for over 10 years”, and the seller promises “pay on arrival nationwide”. Along with those lofty assurances, the site also promises that you can “try out the gunbefore you pay” and guarantees to “destroy all client information”. The guns are hardly quality buys and likely scams, running from 1,500 to 8,000 RMB, with QQ and phone numbers at the ready for willing buyers. They respond quickly to requests;TWOCtried to make contact with these sellers, but they were entirely uninterested in answering questions like, “How can you make sure it's conf i dential?”

Police destroy confiscated firearms and replicas with a steam roller in Lanzhou, Gansu Province

It's likely that a scam is waiting just around the bend on any one of these gun trading websites. On 110. com, a site that offers free legal advice, a search for “air dog” yields many victims of fraud. In many ways, it's the perfect crime because the marks will assume that they can't go to the police because they are purchasing extremely illegal goods. The usual swindle involves the seller asking the client to pay for part of the price fi rst; then after several days, they call the client disguised as the courier company demanding the rest of the payment before handing over the gun, a gun that never materializes. Then, there is the good ol' fashioned scam of hazard pay for nothing, telling customers that they need to be paid extra or up front due to the treacherous nature of the business. Some even have the outright gall to charge for a gun permit.

“Ninety-nine percent of online gun merchants are frauds,” says the forum manager of China Hunt Forum.“It's likely that you'll buy a gun today and get arrested tomorrow. There are already so many people who get arrested from internet gun purchases, and we should be smart enough not to do it.” China's gun crackdowns are massive in both scope and capture, and China Hunt Forum points out: “It's not worth it to commit a crime for a hobby, and don't rely on your luck. You will get caught sooner or later and lose your money, your gun, and your freedom.”

CHlNA'S GUN CONTROl lAWS lET ONlY A SElECT FEW CARRY OR HANDlE GUNS lEGAllY

China's gun control laws let only a select few carry or handle guns legally. One of course is sport-related shooting ranges, where users can pay a handsome sum to fi re everything from automatic rif l es to anti-aircraft weapons. Hunting areas designated by the Forestry Bureau may also issue licenses, and civilians can own gun permits in wildlife conservation and research areas, circumstances and permissions permitting. These permits last for a year and are only valid in the designated area, meaning taking one out of the selected zone can potentially lead to three years in prison, just for leaving the bullets in your pocket.

There are many myths and legends about how China's gun control got to be so strict. For example, at 10:10am on February 2, 1966, the Great Hall of the People was holding an event when a bullet fl ew through a window on the hall's northern side. At fi rst the police suspected that the gunshot came from the famous Chang'an Street, but after investigating over 1,000 cars they found nothing. So, they turned to the neighborhood north of the hall and found that the family at 44 Nanchangjie owned a gun with bullets matching those they found in the hall. However, it wasn't a terrorist attack or a botched assassination; it turned out that the family's 13-year-old kid was bothered by a sparrow chirping in the tree in his yard and decided to take out this little avian annoyance with the family fi rearm. This is commonly pointed to as the beginning of China's strict modern control of guns—suggesting China then understood the dangers of privately owned fi rearms and set out to ban them. However, no real legislation passed in 1966.

A year later, Red Guards nationwide started to rob military storehouses to take guns, heavy machine guns, grenades, and even tanks. This was used as a reason for gun control as well, but legislation and enforcement still crawled along; similar stories emanate from 1989. By the time 1996 rolled around, on October 1, China passed the fi rst real law outright banning the private ownership of guns, followed swiftly by enforcement and the conf i scation of private weapons and hunting rif l es.

Of all the legitimate excuses for owning and using a fi rearm, hunting is perhaps the most justif i able, but, while most forms of hunting are illegal, there are those who want to bring it back. Once upon a time, foreigners could come to China with their arsenals to hunt—and more recently than you might imagine too. The Hunting Consortium Ltd. is run by a Mr. Robert Kerns, who around a decade ago sent foreigners to China to hunt: “The reopening of hunting in China could be an enormous asset to Chinese wildlife management and conservation. It would generate millions of dollars to fl ow directly to the wildlife management off i ces where the hunts take place,” he says. Kerns and many like him believe that the hunting of game, and the licensing and fees that go along with it, can help nature reserves with much-needed resources—free from the taxpayer pocket. Long ago, though the fees were high and the game was sparse, rich foreigners could opt to pull the trigger on any number of animals, including Tibetan antelope and even wild Yak.

Kern says, “During the period when hunting was open in China, foreign hunters brought their own rif l es. Chinese fi rearm permits were provided through several tourism companies, which were involved in supporting those hunting trips.” Far from the handguns and killing machines seen in American movies (and on the news), Kern is quick to point out that the weapons these men used werefor sport. “Firearms brought to China were the same as would be brought anywhere else in the world for the type of hunts involved—modern, bolt action, scope sighted sporting arms.”

The hunting clubroom for 52Safari International in the heart of Beijing

Of course, violence isn't the only effect of widespread gun ownership. If China's citizens were to be permitted private fi rearms, then it could pose a danger to what little remains of China's wildlife; China, to put it mildly, has a bit of a poaching problem. But Kern believes a pro-hunting environment is, by its nature, anti-poaching, insisting that it can pay for the upkeep that China sorely needs to protect its endangered species: “Sport hunting has proved itself to be a primary weapon used against poaching. It generates enormous funding for anti-poaching patrols...the purchase of vehicles, game ranger salaries, modern electronic equipment and optics, fuel for vehicles, and other assets.” Kern also stresses the need for strict care and regulation, “With regard to the question of domestic hunting by Chinese citizens, my personal view is that Chinese citizens should pay the same high fees that foreign citizens have to pay in order to hunt China's rarest species. There may be room for a lower price scale for hunting more common species. This is a matter for the Chinese government to determine, based on political and cultural constraints. ”

Right or wrong, the days when foreigners could come to China to hunt game are off i cially over, and things aren't much easier for Chinese hunters. But, that doesn't mean the Chinese aren't hunting; indeed, it has become a status symbol. With China's economic rise, hunting safaris are becoming more and more popular amongst Chinese tycoons. Curious about what it's like to hunt for sport and stymied by the prohibition on guns in their own country, China's millionaires are spending their hard-earned money to travel the world to kill all manner of game.

American Scott Lupien runs 52Safari International Hunting Club Ltd., which carries China's wealthy to fi ve continents to hunt everything from lions to polar bears—yes, polar bears. Lupien runs his hunting business, not from a Victorian hunting tent in darkest Africa or a board room in America, but in an off i ce complete with skin-lined clubhouse here in Beijing, down in Gaobeidian. “Typically it's big game,” Lupien says. “But, we just did a bird hunt down in Argentina last month, and we do game fi shing in Mexico, but mostly big game and mostly in Africa. Mainly, the Big Five have been real popular, especially elephants.”The “Big Five” refers to some of Africa's largest animals, namely lions, cape buffalo, leopards, rhinoceros, and, of course, elephants. This business, despite its legality, has drawn quite a bit of controversy.

“Every hunt that we do is completely legal and according to the laws and regulations of the county where we're at—that includes polar bear hunting. We all buy permits to hunt. It's all been preapproved by the government as part of their elevated quota, part of their management,” Scott says. “You'll fi nd that any hunting anywhere in the world is always going to have controversy because there are people who are just opposed to it and just don't understand it.”

Regardless of controversy, there is a market for this lucrative venture—some Chinese patrons pay upwards of 600,000 RMB to hunt the most prized prey. For the right price Chinese patrons can hop on a package trip to Tanzania via Dubai to stay in a hunting tent that would have Allan Quatermain jealous and then wake up in hunting grounds rich with everything from crocodile to ostrich. It may be a niche market, but China's newfound wealth is making lavish fi rearm furloughs very popular.“What is growing here is the number of wealthy people and their appetite to do new things, so there is growing demand for people going abroad and hunting. Owning a fi rearm in China is not legal...but some are buying them abroad and keeping them abroad. That's growing, but it's still a very small number.”

There is a chasm between the hobbyist buying BBs and the Chinese tycoon shooting brown bears in Canada, and while China's strict gun control legislation may have stomped out gun violence to an almost barely visible level, gun crime as it pertains to the manufacture and sale of both dangerous fi rearms and near harmless “air dogs” has left a perceptible and growing gun culture looking for an outlet. In 1984, Xu Haifeng, a shooting prodigy lacking in professional training, won the fi rst ever gold medal for China at the Olympic Games, in the 50 meter shooting event, and the Chinese nation rejoiced—ever since China has enjoyed huge success in Olympic shooting. Certainly, guns play a role in modern China, but nobody is quite sure what that role is.