(People's Daily Online) The fate of Liu Dawei that would lead him to a life sentence conviction began on July, 2014. Then 18-year-old, gun enthusiast Liu placed an online order to purchase 24 replica firearms from a Taiwanese website at a cost of 30,540 yuan (around 4602.07 USD). But his parcel never arrived at his home in Quanzhou, southeast China’s Fujian province. Two months later, on September 29, 2014, Liu was arrested for arm trafficking. Police have identified 20 out of the 24 “replica guns” as real guns. On April 30, 2015, Liu has been sentenced to life imprisonment. In the courtroom, Liu Dawei yelled out at the top of his lungs, “Please shoot me with the guns I bought! I’ll admit guilty if I could be killed!”

The judge evoked Article 151 of PRC Criminal Law: “Smuggling arms, ammunitions, nuclear materials, or counterfeit currency notes shall be sentenced to imprisonment of over seven years, with a fine or forfeiture of property. Offenses of an extraordinarily serious nature [...] should be punished with life imprisonment or death penalty, with forfeiture of property.”

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