China bans pretty much all private ownership of firearms, but that doesn’t mean that guns don’t exist there. In fact, they exist in huge numbers. A recent raid in southern China netted more than 10,000 illegal guns, the largest confiscation of illegal firearms in Chinese history. Seized along with the guns were some 120,000 knives, and fifteen people were arrested. China is also using the no-questions-asked turn-in model to try to reduce the number of firearms in the country, with the Ministry of Public Security reporting more than 150,000 guns turned in within just a few months. Despite the scarcity and illegality, the citizens are very curious . . .
with major shooting facilities like the Bejing North International Shooting Range opening around the country. Also, some of China’s elite now take part in unsanctioned sport shooting and illegal hunting expeditions for wild-fowl. An armed populace is about the Chinese government’s worst nightmare, but as the trend slowly shifts in that direction, it’ll be an interesting thing to see.
Fire crews fighting a car fire in El Paso, Texas “had to take cover” after several rounds of ammunition were heard going off inside the vehicle. They also shut down a neighboring thoroughfare for more than an hour while knocking down the 5 a.m. blaze. While I’ve highlighted FUD from the press about ammunition in fires on several occasions in the past, I can’t really fault them for this one. While the ammunition may very well have been loose in a box and therefore relatively harmless, it is possible that the ammo cooking off was actually in a firearm, perhaps stashed in the glovebox, and that makes things a little more dicey. All the SAAMI videos in the world don’t count for squat when you have no idea exactly what you’re dealing with.
In last night’s Digest, I told you about a student suspended in Maine due to his possession of a bright yellow squirt gun. A followup article says that the teen may have been taking part in an “Assassin” game, where individuals try to “take out” one another through the use of stealth, surprise, and strategy. Apparently part of the informal ruleset the game is played under is that it will only be played outside school grounds, but administrators of high schools and colleges are concerned just the same. I’m not sure if this is really a thing, or if it’s another one of those rumors perpetuated almost solely by the media coverage (like “eyeballing” vodka and those rubber “sex-game” bracelets), but I don’t think it really matters. Whether he was playing some sort of game or just had a squirt gun because he had a squirt gun, 10 days off seems pretty excessive.
I didn’t really look into this any deeper than what you see here, but the guy sure can shoot fast. I’m just gonna leave it at that.
His facial expressions during the “look back” video during the AK reloads remind me of a guitar player who is really getting into his licks. They make some goofy faces, and this guy would fit right in.
Richard Ryan aims to find out how many Peeps a .50BMG can go through. Y’know, because it’s Easter weekend. Got ’em all lined up like little soldiers and BLAMMO! I really hate Peeps, but I gotta give them credit. Those little bastards are apparently pretty tough.
I much preferred the paint-filled eggs, which made great high-speed video. Or the fourth chocolate bunny, who was just standing there like “‘Sup?” as his buddies got vaporized. Oh, and here’s last year’s Peeps video, if yer interested.
When I first seen the image of the Chinese confiscation, I was thinking “best gun show table ever”. Then I read the text. It would be awesome with the increase in knife attacks if the Chinese started protesting for the right to carry.
I don’t see that ending well.
Chinese people don’t need guns. They stand up to tanks armed only with shopping bags just fine.
At least Shopping Bag Man did more than whine/post on Facebook/TTAG like a bunch of teenage girls.
… don’t know if troll.
If even 1% of the Chinese people own a firearm that is somewhere north of 1 million guns.
Good luck with the confiscation effort, comrades.
Off by a factor of 10, it should be close to 15,000,000 since the Chi-Coms have about 1.5 BILLION people.
Thanks. I was trying to do the math in my head.
I was remembering an old gag where if you’re a Chinese guy and your girlfriend says you’re “one in a million” there would still be fifteen hundred of you.
Oh yeah, Assassin really is a thing. It’s stupid, but also harmless.
I played a game like that in high school over 20 years ago. It was a blast.
They used to have (maybe they still do) such a game at the University I attended about 20 years ago. It was called K.A.O.S (Killing as Organised Sport).
Wasn’t there a movie about it called Gotcha or something like that?
The tenth victim series of novels by Robery Sheckley are viciously funny. They spawned the tenth victim movie, which arguably started the assassin game craze. It was more popular during the 80s. I highly recommend the novels. Steve Jackson games publishes “Killer” which is a codification of rules for the assassin game. It can be entertaining.
We played it too. We had two team captains who had lists of people to assassinate. They would give it to us at some point and we had to shoot those people with those cheesey disc guns to “assassinate” them. The game got banned after a while. It became too distracting when two or three kids started shooting discs at each other in the hall running around like idiots. Imagine you have about 10-15 people playing the game and breaks between class became interesting.
Definitely a thing. There are pretty regular Assassin games in the residence halls at my university. To “kill” someone you have to mark their neck with a permanent marker, at least in our version.
My (adult) friend had a water-pistol Assassin game going with his improv troupe. It’s that much more fun when you’re grown up and can get around more easily and even take time off to be sneaky about it. The usual rule is, no killing when you’re all in the one place that you have in common (e.g., school, class, or whatever it is that makes you a group)
the version we played went like this. everyone had a target, you get your target and then go after theirs and on and on until only 1 person remains.
I can confirm that high school students do play “assassin” games sometimes with water guns.
In my school, it was called “elimination”. The seniors would form into teams, and the object was to “eliminate” rival team members by getting them wet somehow. This could be with a squirt gun, water balloons, a hose, or just a cup of water. I remember one epic drive-by water ballooning that happened in the school parking lot… Fun stuff!
Looks like a lot of 1911 knock-offs from the P.I.
Or Norinco, they made some nice ones that we can;t get anymore.
Norinco 1911s are pretty common here in Canada, they cost about $350. A while ago a dealer had them on special with 1000rds of ammo for $500.
I don’t personally own one (yet) but as I’ve heard they make an excellent base for building a competition gun, the frames are of quite high quality.
Norinco also makes a copy of the old Colt Woodsman.
Am sorta interested in one, could make a good start for comp shooting since they are cheap and the barrel is exposed (could integrally suppress it)
The high speed of peep chunks tumbling through the air was hilarious!
I like how three of the chocolate bunnies were vaporized!
Yeah, we played Assassin in the 80’s as well. We didn’t use just water pistols though, you could booby trap, poison, run over, bomb or whatever you wanted as long as the referee approved it. For instance, just adding a little water (“poison”) to someone’s drink was perfectly fair. Only the moderators knew who all the players were as well (you only knew who your current target was), which made the paranoia level pretty high. We did get the cops called a couple times, once over an ill advised tracer gun public shootout at a shopping center, but just one bored uniform showed up and ragged on them a little.
In China if you know the right people or have the cash or favor to give, you can get pretty much anything. Despite what they have tried corruption, graft, and a HUGE underground economy exists.
I am not all surprised and its the same in Brazil, Russia and India as well.
It is absolutely the same in Russia. That’s not even a question, and hasn’t been since the Cold War.
I dunno about India (but it seems highly likely), but it’s also absolutely true in all of Central and South America, as well as Africa.
What surprises me is that it’s not quite as big here. As far as we know, anyway.
“What surprises me is that it’s not quite as big here.”
There’s no need for an underground economy if the legitimate economy is unhindered by government regulation and excessive taxation. US examples of underground economies include drugs, prostitution, booze during prohibition, and “illegal” guns.
Drugs are bad, mmmkay? They’re bad ’cause they’re bad, mmmkay?
If you got money and know the right people you can get anything anywhere. That is at least my experience. Somewhere it is easier, somewhere it is harder, doesn’t mean it can’t be done. You also can’t be as picky, for instance in Scandiavia you can easily get a Glock or a HK P30 when it comes to pistols and a G3 or MP5 when it comes to longarms. Mainly beause that is what the police/millitary used/use.
Politicians don’t want you to know this but most illegal firearms usually come from millitary/police armories. There is of course smuggling/theft of “legal” firearms but that is much less common. I am not sure if this applies to the US though.
A bit of irony is that it was Mao Zedong who said “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”.
This “assassin” game has been going on for decades in Lewiston, Me. I grew up in the next town over and they were playing it when I was in school and presumably long before that. It’s not played at school, and hasn’t for as long as I remember, but sure it’s not the first squirt gun to be brought to school in prep for an after school ambush. Poor kid is getting the short end of a long stick.
Hey, Matt. We’re neighbors. I’m in the Dirty Lew, myself.
So, it seems the Chinese people and the Americans have something in common; they both hate their governments having been seized by elitist mafia types.
Matt, spot on with the face making by the dude while reloading. That is funny.
I was hearing a wah-wha pedal during that.
Wasn’t there a movie made in the 80’s about squirt gun assassination games. Think it was called “Squirt”
Also I saw somewhere that Instructor Zero is Italian Spec Ops or was, but who knows
“Gotcha” with Anthony Edwards and (one of my favorites), Linda Fiorentino. 1985.
the Assassin’s game is real I’ve taken part in one and even moderated a game on college campuses. I don’t see what the fuss is about, people aren’t actually hurting each other or violating any laws or rights.
The rules vary but generally follow these simple rules you provide a picture of yourself and your name to a game admin, the admin assigns everybody who signed up with a target to “assassinate” then it’s your job to find your target using your amateur PI skill and borderline creepy stalkers skills. Once you find your target you pretend to kill them with something completely harmless like shoot them with a nerf gun, “stab” them with a spoon, I know one guy pretended to “car bomb” his target by loading an audio cd with him yelling “YOU ARE NOW DEAD” on loop and and left in in his target’s car stereo left on max volume so he heard it when he turned on his car.
Something resembling your “assassins” game was more or less the basis of the Dave Barry novel Big Trouble. Don’t judge, there was a time the internet wasn’t the be-all end-all, and a person would run out of Vonnegut or Adams. Plus, base libraries are notoriously small.
Those ain’t real firearms, just airsoft toys. They even demonstrated firing at the spot on TV news.
The Communist Chinese Government bans airsoft, a replica “looks like” real guns, which can launch projectiles (even quite weak), is considered illegal “firearms”.
We played “Assasins” while I was in highschool, but we used markers instead of squirt guns. Red markers were encouraged…naturally.
The ultimate ninja assasination was sneeking up behind one of your buddies and dragging a red marker across the width of his throat.
So I guess the Assassin game really is a thing and I really missed out in high school and college, because that would have been right up my alley.
Re. the fast shooter…he is actually *REALLY* fast *and* combat accurate as well.
The only thing that looked different to me on the video was the “choke draw” with his CCW. Might be a bit faster than the way most would do that.
If you type “assassin game” into google, the first hit is the wikipedia page about “Assassin (game)”, and it’s many alternate names and variations of play.
Re; the fast shooter. I guess I don’t get out enough. That bit with shooting a target while one and two guys were holding silhouettes in front of him moving with him and blocking his view as he moved I’ve never seen before, and it looks so fun I could about die.
Holy smokes! No kidding. That’s some cool stuff there. That guy’s also extremely fast.
Thought:
As one who primarily shoots an AK (lost recently in a tragic kayaking accident) I was interested in his “thumb-over-the-gas-tube AR-style support and hold. It looked like it would obstruct his sights.
All the Chinese guns were Airsoft.
If this Chi-Com gun seizure is anything like our total drug seizure percentages, which is “estimated” to be 10%-20%, then try to imagine how many firearms and the sort still remain undetected. China might be extremely concerned about that.
We played the “Assassin” game around the last weeks of school when we could see and feel the beginning of summer. The teachers only cared if we squirted people indiscriminately who were not playing them game. We didn’t have a name for it…we just did it. With the exception of my palm-concealed squirter that fired a stream from between your clenched fingers, everyone had a gun-styled squirter.
It was no big deal…and no police were ever alerted.
But then, that was 1978.
Now there’s an arsenal.
…of airsoft guns – apparently. http://beijingcream.com/2014/04/chinas-gun-problem-real-or-airsoft/