A 51-year-old Tianjin woman appealed on Tuesday a local court decision sentencing her to three-and-a-half years in jail for illegally possessing firearms in December 2016.
Xu Xin, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology's School of Law, who was hired by Zhao Chunhua as her lawyer, told the Global Times that he visited Zhao Tuesday and filed the appeal to the court in the Hebei district of Tianjin.
Police said the guns used at Zhao's balloon-shooting stall met the legal definition of a firearm. Zhao is the first to be convicted among the 14 stall owners arrested in October 2016, news outlet thepaper.cn reported.
Xu also acted for a controversial imitation-gun case of Liu Dawei, 21, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2016 after he bought 24 imitation guns from a Taiwan vendor.
According to the current legal definition of a firearm, which was made in 2010, guns able to fire bullets with a kinetic force of over 1.8 joules per square centimeter - less than it takes to pierce human skin - will be considered illegal.
There have been 23 similar cases that have led to three balloon-stall owners being convicted, 17 given convictions with reprieves and three getting jail sentences.
