Release time: 2024-10-21 19:31
Update time: 2024-10-21 20:45
CHEN,KUAN-HSUN CHEN,LI-FENG /Comprehensive Report
The domestic problem of illegal guns is still rampant, and now Taiwan and the United States have joined forces to crack down on cross-border firearms smuggling. A man in China allegedly found someone to order from the United States, cut the guns into parts, mixed them with hardware supplies, and tried to fly them to Taiwan for resale. This time, a total of 16 standard pistols were seized in one fell swoop. The police also discovered that before the suspect was arrested, he had successfully smuggled goods through this method at least four times in the past two years or so. We also sent personnel to the United States for the first time to retrieve seizure evidence.
He put his hands behind his back and was investigated. The man in black was identified as involved in transnational smuggling. The firearms were secretly transported to Taiwan but were stopped by U.S. Customs early. The U.S. side identified them as having lethality, and immediately reported the seizure to Taiwan.
“This successful case was solved because of the long-term cooperation between the U.S. and Taiwanese judicial authorities,” said U.S. Homeland Security Investigations Investigator Jay Huang.
Our prosecutor’s office investigated and found that a man named Xie in Taiwan found someone to buy a gun from the United States, cut the gun into pieces, disassembled it into various parts, glued it to hardware with hot melt glue, packed it in a box and flew it to Taiwan. The purpose is to resell gangsters and make huge profits.
TAN,CHUN-PING, an investigator from the Interpol Investigation Team 2 of the Criminal Bureau, explained, “The members of the task force pretended to be postal personnel and delivered these packages to the receiving place, and successfully arrested the consignees on the 1st to 5th floors.”
There were as many as 16 firearms seized, all of which were standard pistols. Each one was officially priced at more than 6,000 to tens of thousands of yuan, but the black market price reached as high as 500,000 yuan. He also confessed to the police that he had been using this method to transport guns for more than two years and had profited from smuggling at least four times. Now, all five people, from the main suspect to accomplices, have been prosecuted.
In April last year (2023), 51 shots were fired at a pawnshop in Tucheng, New Taipei City in broad daylight; in November of the same year, 88 people were shot in Xuejia, Tainan, and a series of major shooting incidents broke out in the country.
Looking at police statistics, the number of firearms seized in recent years is close to a thousand, or even more than a thousand. The numbers are staggering, highlighting the seriousness of the problem of illegal guns in the country.
Wang, Po-Chi, associate professor of the Department of Criminal Justice at Ming Chuan University, pointed out, “Of course, after the law is revised, the main premise is that it must be able to actually detect or intercept before there is the possibility of interception. Whether it is at the airport or at the port, To intercept, of course this is very important.”
In the face of the proliferation of illegal guns, even if the Police Department amends the law to accept gun parts, scholars point out that whether the actual operation of the checkpoint can play an inspection role, effectively control the situation, and block the source is a key. Cooperation and intelligence with various countries Capital exchange cannot be ignored either.