Who needs gun during peaceful demonstration?

On Sunday morning, the Hong Kong police seized a semi-automatic pistol with 105 bullets, plus other weapons such as military knives. Of the five cartridge clips found on site, three were fully loaded.

And the intentions of the 11 suspects caught are clear. They planned to take the pistol to a peaceful demonstration held on Sunday afternoon. According to the prosecutor at the court hearing on Monday, the suspects had already passed maps that marked the positions of the gunners at the demonstration.

That incident once again shows the true face of rioters in Hong Kong. They claim to be "for democracy" while certain Western media outlets call them "freedom fighters", but all they are doing is destroying Hong Kong people’s democratic rights.

It is these rioters that turn peaceful demonstrations into violent scenarios and brutally attack the residents with their weapons in hand when the latter express objections to violence. It is they who killed a 70-year-old cleaner with bricks and set an innocent resident on fire after pouring flammable liquid to him.

It is the same rioters, equipped with bows and arrows, bricks, and petrol bombs that occupied Hong Kong Polytechnic University and turned it into something like war-torn Syria. Now, with a pistol and loaded cartridge clips in hand, they had the ability to kill at one strike, and posed threat to every resident of Hong Kong.

On Sunday, the violent protesters set fire to the Hong Kong High Court and Hong Kong Court of Final appeal. Over 10,000 petrol bombs were found last week. If the Hong Kong police did not seize the gun in time, the result would have been disastrous and the rioters would have caused casualties at the demonstration on Monday.

Fortunately, the "if" did not happen. The police caught the suspects and stopped their evil plan of causing casualties. Thankfully, the demonstration held in Hong Kong from Sunday afternoon to evening remained peaceful in general.

Having lived in the fear and chaos brought about by rioters for months, Hong Kong residents hate violence and hope to restore peaceful life to their home. It is time to root out violence and protect the good, peace-loving people of Hong Kong to live free from fear.