From Asia Times:
…Despite harsh penalties, China’s Ministry of Public Safety (MPS) has said it increasingly faces armed suspects. In the most recent high-profile case last month, a security guard in Hunan province in southerly China, apparently upset by a court-imposed divorce settlement, shot and killed three judges and wounded three others before turning the gun on himself.
It was not an isolated incident. In early 2007, a man in northeast China killed five family members and neighbors in a rampage with a homemade pistol. In September 2007, a man in Guangzhou city in southern China was sentenced to 19 years after using a replica gun to rob a bank customer. And in December 2008, a guard at a munitions depot shot and killed a colleague over a chess match, and was shot to death himself by police two days later.
Guns figured prominently during the 2008 unrest in the Tibet Autonomous Region, when a policeman and a Tibetan insurgent were killed during a gun battle.
“There has been an increase [of gun crime] in recent years,” said Ding Xinzhen of Chongqing Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Law. “It can be attributed to the rich-poor gap and unfair distribution of social benefits, together with inefficient government management [of gun laws].”
