Hong Kong Gun Club licensee not found guilty of failing to clean up rubber stopper residue

The Hong Kong Gun Club did not properly clean up the residues, resulting in the accumulation of a large amount of shooting waste such as lead pellets, rubber plugs and flying target fragments in the nearby woodlands.

The club's licensee was charged with "failure to comply with the terms and conditions of a licence to hold a firearms or ammunition" and earlier denied the charges.

Deputy Magistrate Lau Hon-hong today (3rd) exonerated him in the West Kowloon Court, saying that the white rubber stoppers of the six shotgun bullets involved in the case may have been brought into the shooting range from outside the shooting range due to natural factors such as wind and rain. , It is not certain that the gun club was not cleaned up in time.

Defendant Zhou Qicheng, 57 years old.

He was charged with failing to comply with the terms and conditions of a licence for possession of firearms or ammunition at the Hong Kong Gun Club on Tsuen Kam Road, Tsuen Wan on April 29, 2021, namely that the licensee did not clean the shooting range before closing. The shooting uses ammunition or parts thereof, 6 white rubber stoppers from shotgun bullets.

Liu Guan ruled that the six rubber stoppers involved in the case belonged to ammunition, and the gun club should ensure that the shooting residues were cleaned up on the day of the shooting event and before the shooting range closed.

The shooting range involved has been shooting since 1973 and closed on July 4, 2020. The police seized the rubber stopper at the skeet shooting range on April 29 last year.

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The referee pointed out that the rubber stopper may be brought into the field from outside the field due to natural factors such as wind and rain

Liu Guan continued to point out that although the rubber stopper is obviously the product of the gun's shooting activities, it is not known when it was actually produced.

According to the testimony in the court and the testimony of firearms experts, the shooting residues have the opportunity to be launched off the field during shooting, and the rubber stopper involved in the case only weighs 2 to 3 grams, which may be affected by natural factors such as wind and rain. In the venue, it is not necessarily because the gun club was not cleaned up in time on the end of the event.

Liu Guan also pointed out that at the beginning of the gun club, employees were responsible for cleaning up the shooting residues. Until 2019, when the residue problem attracted the attention of the media and the society, a cleaning company was specially hired to clean up the residues inside and outside the field. The defendant also said that he would come to the gun every month. will inspect.

Although the defendant had stated in the video interview that it might have been accidentally left behind by the cleaning staff during the cleaning process, this was self-inviting suspicion, but since the prosecution failed to present evidence beyond reasonable doubt, Liu Guan believed that the defendant, as a licensee, had There are reasonable grounds to believe that the gun club has completed the cleanup work in accordance with the regulations after the museum was closed on that day, and did not violate the relevant regulations, so he was ruled to be exonerated.

Case number: WKS13697/2021