Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said yesterday he would consider allowing private security guards to carry guns but rejected legalizing guns for the general public.
Jiang said he was open to discussion on the issue and that he would solicit opinions from experts and security firms.
He said his understanding was that there was some support for arming guards within the security industry but a consensus had not been reached. Not all security personnel wanted to be equipped with guns, he said, because it could make their job more dangerous.
Jiang was speaking in response to questions filed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yu Tian (余天) during a question-and-answer session of the legislature’s International Administration Committee meeting.
The sale of guns was a lucrative business, Yu said. A 9mm hand gun cost between NT$70,000 and NT$80,000 on the black market, with a submachine gun costing between NT$150,000 and NT$500,000. As long as a person had the money or contacts, it was easy to get hold of a deadly weapon, he said.
“But ordinary people and security personnel only have [electroshock weapons] to protect themselves,” he said.
Yu said he wondered whether the Ministry of the Interior would consider legalizing guns so ordinary people could protect themselves, to which Jiang said he did not think it was necessary.
“If people can have guns, the potential criminal may think twice about doing something bad,” Yu said. “That might help reduce the crime rate.”
Jiang said owning guns might not necessarily help cut the crime rate but could create more problems than it solved.
“We will not go down that path,” he said.
Jiang agreed to consider Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng’s (吳育昇) proposal to study the possibility of increasing the visibility of police patrols and equipping all police vehicles with GPS in response to a recent slew of violent crimes.
This week has seen a number of high-profile violent crimes.
A Taichung man was gunned down at his home on Monday. Police said suspects fired 17 rounds and they found seven bullets in the victim’s body.
On Tuesday, a gang of 15 people beat up a man accompanying a friend to an intensive care unit only to find out they had attacked the wrong man. On Wednesday, a taxi driver turned himself in after he allegedly ran over and killed a passenger in Taipei City on Tuesday after the two got into a fight.
DPP Legislator William Lai (賴清德) expressed surprise when National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) told the committee that the state of public security as “stable,” saying there was a yawning chasm between the public’s perception and Wang’s.
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
Taiwan is hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) for the first time, welcoming more than 400 young linguists from 43 nations to National Taiwan University (NTU). Deputy Minister of Education Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) said at the opening ceremony yesterday that language passes down knowledge and culture, and influences the way humankind thinks and understands the world. Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual nation, with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, 16 indigenous languages and Taiwan Sign Language all used, Chu said. In addition, Taiwan promotes multilingual education, emphasizes the cultural significance of languages and supports the international mother language movement, he said. Taiwan has long participated
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a
RSS