5 Guangdong students arrested for gun running

Five college students in Guangdong Province were recently arrested for smuggling air guns and ammunition from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, the People's Procuratorate of Nanshan District in Shenzhen announced in a statement.

The five persons detained are students at Shenzhen Polytechnic and Jiangmen Preschool Teachers' School. They smuggled 41 air guns and more than 3,000 lead bullets from Hong Kong, said the statement.

They were lured by a gun dealer surnamed Li on the Internet, who offered them 550 yuan ($90) for delivering an air gun and 1,200 yuan for a long-barreled gun.

They were asked to purchase designated types of guns and lead bullets in Hong Kong, disassemble the guns and put them into packages. They then smuggled the arms past x-ray inspection points into Shenzhen.

Some of the students recruited others to help them, and one started a business finding buyers on the Internet and hiring other students to smuggle guns.

Two gun dealers were also arrested. They found buyers and sold guns through online forums or shops and delivered guns via courier or mail.

"Smuggling more than five non-military guns carries a sentence of at least seven years in jail while anyone found smuggling more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition is subject to a life sentence. If convicted, they will face a serious punishment," Yao Zhiming, a lawyer at the Beijing-based Yingke Law Firm, told the Global Times.

"College students are the perfect targets for gun dealers as they can pass through customs easily. They're willing to risk taking part in illegal trading because of the money they can make," Liu Tao, a professor with Chinese People's Public Security University, told the Global Times.

He added that authorities should seek to better educate college students and crack down on online trading in prohibited goods.

Chinese customs have investigated 50 smuggling cases involving weapons and ammunition in 2013, an increase of 16.3 percent from the previous year. A total of 5,916 guns, 882 gun parts and 13,000 rounds of ammunition were confiscated, according to statistics from the General Administration of Customs of China.