Man Toting Toy Gun Tests China's Strict Firearm Laws

Threat posted on social media to go on a killing spree leads to 5 days’ detention.

By Thomas Shipley

A 21-year-old man surnamed Jiang was arrested Monday for posting photos on social media of himself brandishing what appeared to be a firearm. The caption read, “Tomorrow I kill Chongzhou,” referring to a city in southwestern China’s Sichuan province near the man’s hometown.

Apart from pictures of himself holding the small handgun in various poses, including one of him pointing it at his own head, Jiang also showed off a police firearm license — one of the few legal ways to own a gun under China’s strict firearm laws.

Jiang posted the photos to his Weibo microblog on Sunday, but when another user asked him whether the gun was for sale, he realized he had made a mistake, according to a local news report. He deleted the original message and followed up with a second post to explain that he had bought the “plastic toy gun” from a street vendor for 10 yuan ($1.45). “This gun does not have the power to kill,” he wrote. “I bought it just for fun.”

Jiang poses in a hotel room while holding what appears to be a firearm to his head. From Weibo

Jiang had downloaded the police firearm license from an online forum, and “Tomorrow I kill Chongzhou” was Sichuan dialect for “Tomorrow I go to Chongzhou,” he further clarified. “I feel terribly sorry — I didn’t think that a joke on Weibo could have a negative effect on society,” he wrote. “Please forgive me. I will explain this to the local police.”

A day later, police tracked him down in Chengdu, the provincial capital.  They said Jiang’s weapon was indeed a toy gun, and that the firearm license was an outdated version used from 1998 to 2000. Jiang was punished with five days’ detention.

In a sense, Jiang got off lucky: In December 2016, the owner of a balloon-shooting stall in Tianjin, a city in northern China, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison because six of her pellet-shooting air guns were deemed to be weapons, as defined by the Chinese government. After widespread public indignation and an appeal, the verdict was changed to a suspended jail sentence. In November, a man who was sentenced to life imprisonment for owning imitation guns was given a retrial.

One week ago, another Chinese citizen felt the brunt of the country’s zero-tolerance approach to irresponsible gun behavior. In a video circulated on messaging app WeChat, the shirtless man stands wielding a handgun next to a table on which sits another gun, three clips, and some loose bullets. With a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, the man boasts in an eastern Chinese dialect about planning to rob a bank.

A video screenshot shows a man smoking a cigarette and wielding a handgun in front of a table with bullets, more guns, and a bottle of alcohol in Zambia.

Chinese authorities identified the man as a native of Nantong, a city in Jiangsu province, who currently lives in Zambia, where gun ownership is legal. According to a report by Sixth Tone’s sister publication, The Paper, authorities contacted the man, surnamed Huang, to impart “legal propaganda and a warning,” and instructed him to return to China to cooperate with police investigations into his behavior. 

In a video message included with the police statement, Huang says: “I spoke of robbing a bank in the video because it’s too boring living abroad. It’s just a joke.”

With contributions from Lin Qiqing.

(Header image: Toy pistols confiscated in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, May 27, 2010. Leo Chan/IC)

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