Police from Chongqing in southwestern China have busted a large firearms manufacturing and trafficking ring, Sixth Tone’s sister publication The Paper reported Monday.

Officers arrested 20 suspects and seized 24 types of guns, as well as production equipment and large quantities of semi-finished firearms, ammunition, and spare parts. The report said that the guns were mainly used for hunting in remote mountain areas — an illegal activity in China except under rare circumstances.

Police from Chongqing’s Liangjiang New Area had been investigating the case for months. In February, they found that some residents frequently ordered oddly shaped spare parts online. One buyer, a man surnamed Ran, owned a repair shop for agricultural machinery, which seemed to explain his need for the materials — but police soon discovered that he would often talk to another villager, surnamed Xiang, about making firearms.

Officers show the seized guns and ammunition in Chongqing, March 2018. From the WeChat public account of the Chongqing police

In March, after a four-night stakeout on the mountainous border between Chongqing and central China’s Hubei province, police caught Xiang hunting and arrested him for illegal possession of firearms. They then arrested Ran for manufacturing firearms in his repair shop.

The pair confessed that they sold firearms to gun enthusiasts online at prices ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands of yuan, primarily for hunting. Police have already arrested 20 of the main buyers and sellers connected to the ring, and their investigation is ongoing.

Firearms are illegal in China, and the unauthorized production, sale, transport, or possession of guns — including air guns — can result in serious punishments ranging from administrative detention to the death penalty. According to media reports, police arrested more than 80,000 suspects in relation to gun crimes between 2011 and 2015.

In April, police in eastern China’s Anhui province cracked a huge ammunition network operating across 30 provincial-level areas. Thirty people were arrested, and the leaders were sentenced to seven to 10 years in prison.

Editor: Qian Jinghua.

(Header image: VCG)