From: [C reuters] at [clari.net] (Reuters)
Newsgroups: clari.world.asia.china,clari.news.issues.guns,clari.news.issues.misc
Subject: Beijing police issues warning to hand in guns
Organization: Copyright 1996 by Reuters
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 1996 7:20:54 PDT
Expires: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 7:20:54 PDT
                                         
         BEIJING (Reuter) - Beijing police issued a public warning to  
the city's 11 million residents Thursday to hand in all guns by 
an Oct. 1 deadline, China's state media said. 
         The response to the passage of a new gun law on July 5 and  
an order to hand in an estimated 10,000 firearms, including 
handguns and hunting rifles, in Beijing has been poor, with just 
1,500 weapons surrendered, newspapers quoted police as saying. 
         After the new law takes effect on Oct. 1, offenders will  
face up to seven years in prison for possessing a gun or 
trafficking in them, and in serious cases the punishment could 
be death. 
         A string of serious crimes has occurred in Beijing in recent  
years, the vast majority of them involving firearms, Zhang 
Liangji, chief of the Beijing municipal Public Security Bureau, 
told the China news service. 
         Most guns available in Beijing had been purchased from a  
market in neighboring Hebei province, although in recent years 
more firearms were entering via coastal provinces, Zhang said. 
         Since the start of the nationwide ``Strike Hard'' crackdown  
on crime in late April, more than 560,000 guns had been 
recovered across China, official figures showed. 
         Chinese officials have reported an increasing number of  
crimes involving firearms, including armed bank robberies in 
which bank tellers and security guards have been shot dead in 
recent months. 
         Crime, virtually eradicated in the years after the  
communists swept to power in 1949, has made a sharp revival 
since paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's sweeping market-oriented 
economic reforms were launched in 1979. 
         The reforms have created a gap between rich and poor that  
has led many jobless, poor peasants and unpaid factory workers 
to turn to robbery.