Stop, wait, check before buying an imitation gun

A Chinese police officer walks over imitation guns to be destroyed in Jinhua city, Zhejiang province, Sept 25, 2014. Local customs authorities have seized more than 70,000 copies of world's most popular firearms since 2011.[Photo/IC]

A 19-year-old boy from Sichuan province, Southwest China, who bought 24 imitation guns on the Internet has been sentenced to life in jail for "smuggling weapons", triggering a controversy. Comments:

Although lack of legal knowledge cannot be used as an excuse to justify the boy's act and extenuate his crime (according to law), it is heartbreaking to see a teenager imprisoned for life for breaking the law because of ignorance. However, this professional and well-documented court decision is different from public expectation, which again proves that the work to spread public awareness about laws still has a long way to go to. Relevant departments should, therefore, make more efforts to educate people about laws so that they better understand at least the ones that could affect their daily life, and act accordingly.

Beijing Youth Daily, Sept 23

The debate on whether imitation guns should be identified as weapons has been going on for long. If an imitation gun identified as a real gun owing to its lethality is purchased from overseas websites, it is very likely to be a defined as felony by the Criminal Law.

Beijing Times, Sept 23

The strict control on imitation guns is understandable and reasonable. Yet it is difficult, even impossible, for ordinary people to study the professional parameters of a gun to determine whether the imitation gun they are buying in a toyshop or on the Internet is a weapon-grade gun in the legal sense. The teenager should not have been identified by the court as being fully aware of the product he was buying.

qq.com, Sept 23