A man who allegedly owned an online store that sold potentially dangerous airguns will go on trial for illegal gun dealing.

Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate Prosecutors' Office said yesterday that it has charged the man, surnamed Zhang, and he will face court soon.

Prosecutors said Zhang's customers had handed in 12 guns, four of which could have caused serious harm. Police also raided several storage areas and seized 48 guns that had not been sold, among them 12 dangerous compressed-air guns.

Zhang, 30, has been unemployed for many years after he graduated from technical school, prosecutors said.

He allegedly confessed to being a gun addict who had previously bought model guns from Guandong Province over the Internet for fun.

Zhang realized model gun-dealing was a way to earn money and he began to sell them online in October 2006, prosecutors said.

He set up a Website for the illegal business which included lists of the types of guns and their prices, plus his cell phone number, prosecutors said.

Once someone showed an interest in buying a gun and they fixed a price with Zhang, he allegedly contacted sellers in Guangdong and contracted to buy the gun from them and sell it at a profit.

Among the brands of guns Zhang allegedly sold were Pistolet Makarova and Desert Eagle.

Prosecutors said Zhang priced his guns from 1,500 yuan to 4,000 yuan (US$205 to US$548) and could earn between 50 yuan and 1,000 yuan from each transaction. He allegedly confessed that he sold four guns a month, earning an average 300 yuan per gun.

Prosecutors said Zhang never met the buyers directly; he hired two men surnamed Liu and Lin to conduct the transactions and paid them 100 yuan to 200 yuan each time.

He also opened a bank account with fake identity documents to receive the money and rented several houses to store his guns, prosecutors said. He was caught on July 20 last year when he went to one of his storage areas to fetch the guns, they said.

(Shanghai Daily February 4, 2008)