In response to terrorism threats, China recently lifted a decade-long ban on police guns and began issuing firearms to officers for the first time across the country.

We plumbed the depth of problems in the wake of these guns in our story today: the sudden spate of suspicious police shootings and woeful lack of training and accountability.

But we also privately consulted officers and gun instructors across the country — in particularly revealing and rare interviews because police in China almost never talk to foreign media. On the condition of anonymity, half a dozen current and retired officers told us how it feels to carry a gun for the first time, worries they now wrestle with and mounting pressures both on the street and in their departments. Here’s what they told us:

Many expressed a surprising aversion to their new firearms.

“I’ve never liked guns,” said one nine-year veteran. Until this year, guns were forbidden to most police — except for SWAT units and teams on special missions. “Even in past special operations, when we were ordered to have guns, I let co-workers take them instead. You have to worry about it misfiring, about it getting stolen or someone dying improperl

A retired officer from Hangzhou City suggested there’re tricky issues of pride at play.

In the past, police were praised for daring to confront criminals without firearms, he said. And whenever bad guys got away or a situation spiraled out of control, police could always fall back on the excuse that they were unarmed, unlike police in many countries.

“Now that they have guns, they’re in a tighter spot,” said the retired officer. “If you shoot, the public may question whether it was necessary. If you don’t, they may say, ‘You can’t even control criminals with the power of  a gun?'”

Blaming the System

The timing is interesting with China arming its officers even as talk grows in the United States of demilitarizing the police forces there in the wake of the shooting in Ferguson, Mo.

Critics complain that Chinese authorities are rarely held accountable for improper shootings. But local officers said that while they may not face prosecution, they often do face internal bureaucratic wrath whenever someone is shot. And if a shooting becomes widely known and sparks public anger, they are sometimes hung out to dry to appease the public.

Most of the police we interviewed blamed the system rather than individual officers for the recent rash of suspicious or wrongful shootings.

Pro-police propaganda poster in China

Many patrol officers who are now carrying guns haven’t fired shot since the police academy, where each recruit is required to shoot five bullets, officers said. One SWAT officer in Guangdong Province said that while his team shoots 100 bullets every morning for practice, regular patrol officers in his district are shooting less than 10 bullets a year.

“There are no standards, every department just makes up their own rules,” he said.

Officers attributed the meager training to bureaucratic inertia, lack of funding and accountability. For years, no national standardized test has existed for licensing police. Instead, several officers said, much of their training often focuses on teaching them Communist ideology and anti-corruption slogans — useless to them on the street.

Proper training, said a 30-year veteran who now advises SWAT teams in Nanjing, isn’t just about shooting accurately but having the psychological fortitude and judgment to respond correctly to pressure situations.

Public Fears, Hollywood Response

No one knows how many people have been shot since officers began carrying guns four months ago because of government secrecy.

But researchers at China’s state-run Legal Daily newspaper published a report last month that suggests a dramatic increase since the policy change. Searching for the keywords “police” and “shot to death” in online news reports, they found 45,100 instances in 2014 compared to 536 the year before. Similarly, instances with the keywords “police” and “guns” rose from 497 to 436,000.

To combat growing fears about their newly armed officers, some departments have become creative. The most popular example has been a series of posters in several jurisdictions of their newly armed officers striking Hollywood action-hero poses.

“You are not fighting alone,” reads the caption on one. Wearing light makeup, stoic-faced officers grip their guns as debris flies about. Flickering embers illuminate their skin.

“We made this poster series to encourage colleagues and send positive messages,” wrote Officer Tu Huiyang from the Huangyan police station in central China in a post on Twitter-like Weibo.

At the photo shoot for the posters, many officers were horribly wooden at first, Tu complained in a state media interview. But he got them to relax by asking them to imagine they were questioning suspects. Some police departments like this one in Luoyang City have posted online posters of officers smiling and joking with their new guns in an apparent attempt to allay fears and anger of unjustified shootings. Sina Weibo

The Huangyan movie posters were quickly emulated by police in other departments in China, including in Beijing, Chengdu, Yantai and Xinjiang. State-run media reports have praised the posters.

But as police shootings continue to mount, experts say, it will take more than Hollywood lighting to sway public opinion and victims’ families.

The government released all these new guns in such rushed manner that “it’s now become like a beast they can no longer control,” said Fu Hualing, a law expert at University of Hong Kong. “The whole system needs time to adapt.”

Let me start off by saying right away that I absolutely love Kroger. As a gun owner, a libertarian and activist I nearly adore Kroger’s strong stand for gun rights, especially in the face of strong criticism coming from anti-gun groups like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. The company’s executives have taken a very clear and unambiguous position stating that all gun owners are welcome as customers in their stores, including open carry customers, so I make it a point to often open carry whenever I go shopping for groceries.  This is both in support of Kroger but also in support of open carry rights here in Ohio.

As a large family we likely spend tens of thousands of dollars there, so this article is less about Kroger and more about Pierce Bryant, a retired Cincinnati cop who works as a Loss Prevention Division Manager at Kroger and is responsible for managing security and loss prevention for stores in the Cincinnati and Dayton areas.  Bryant’s LinkedIn profile states his responsibilities as a Loss Prevention Manager:

Responsible for the Division execution of the Company standards and initiatives to reduce asset loss throughout the division. Responsible for developing Division goals and strategy action plans for implementation of Company/ Division loss prevention initiatives.

Retired Cincinnati cop Pierce Bryant currently works as a Loss Prevention Division Manager for Kroger in the Cincinnati/Dayton area

Many local gun rights activists are aware of Bryant’s subversive anti-gun tactics.  I have been contacted by one individual who has provided me with an e-mail he sent to a Kroger manager at the corporate office, advising Kroger of anti-gun signs being posted in one of their Cincinnati-area stores, signs which are in violation of corporate policy.  To his surprise, the e-mail ended up in Pierce Bryant’s hands who refused to do anything to solve the problem.

In another incident in a high-crime area of Cincinnati, a Kroger store had a no-gun sign posted on the doors, which is believed to have been posted there at Bryant’s advice.  When inquiring as to why there is an anti-gun sign on the store doors, the store manager claimed the landlord requires the signs to be up, which was an untrue statement made at the time. After activists contacted the corporate office, the no-gun signs came down again, continuing the cat and mouse game.

The most recent anti-gun incident that took place in Pierce Bryant’s division took place in a Kroger store located in Beavercreek, Ohio.  When new inaccurate signs popped up on the store’s doors in violation of Kroger’s corporate policy, local activists inquired as to why the signs are up.

The signs, which are located on all the doors in the store, state that a gun carrier is committing a felony by walking into the store because the store has a liquor permit.  The problem is that this particular sign was made irrelevant years ago when the Ohio law was changed to allow gun carriers to walk into any establishment that sells alcohol without violating any law. The only requirement is that one may not carry a gun and drink at the same time.  Furthermore, the Beavercreek Kroger store does not even sell liquor in open containers which makes the sign meaningless.

Outdated, untrue and ominous sign plastered on the doors of the Beavercreek Kroger store threatening gun owners with a potential felony for simply walking into the store

When I attempted to discuss this issue with Evelyn Miller, the Beavercreek store manager, she said that the area Loss Prevention Manager (Pierce Bryant) is responsible for all the gun signage in for all the area stores.  When pressed to give the name of the particular individual posting the signs, she refused to give a name, grabbed my camera and threatened to call the local police.

After a member of Ohio Open Carry spent nearly two hours on the phone with various individuals at the Kroger corporate office, there was no clear answer as to why there are outdated, ominous anti-gun signs in a store when the official corporate policy is that all gun owners are welcome into the store.  When pressed again about why certain store managers are ignoring corporate policy, the answer was again ambiguous and unclear, with one individual saying “no comment” and another individual saying “we support the decisions our stores make.”

To many of us, it appears that the local Loss Prevention division of Kroger run by former Cincinnati cop Pierce Bryant is undermining the pro-gun corporate policy and push his anti-gun agenda on stores, sometimes perhaps even without the knowledge of local managers!  This is disturbing but not necessarily surprising based on past interactions with Bryant.

When a member of Ohioans for Concealed Carry (OFCC) called Bryant to inquire as to why certain stores prohibit guns and others do not and he observed that “Bryant was clearly unhappy with the corporate policy and was arrogant and almost a jerk” when discussing the issue of guns in the stores.

Kroger store manager Evelyn Miller threatened to call the police simply for inquiring about the anti-gun signs on the store’s doors and then proceeded to grab the camera and push it away

Kroger CEO Randy McMullen has repeatedly and publicly stated that Kroger will not take an anti-gun position as a result of boycott threats from anti-gun organizations, but it appears that a very real threat comes from inside the company where certain employees who may have anti-gun sentiments appear to use their positions of authority to undermine and water down what is clearly an unambiguous corporate policy.

With this said, we are calling on Kroger to clarify why certain divison managers for Loss Prevention are using their authority to push this agenda, making it very difficult for Kroger customers to have a uniform experience in stores across the state or country.

As a family, we will continue to support Kroger and will continue to shop and carry in their stores, however we are asking that all anti-gun signs which are attempting to intimidate gun owners be removed from store doors.  If a store sells liquor in open containers, they can certainly post a sign at the bar or tasting area where the alcohol is served, like all other establishments do.

In response to the rogue store managers’ insistence to keep signs posted in violation of corporate policy, Ohio Open Carry decided to host an open carry event at the Beavercreek store over the weekend.  All Kroger customers who are also gun owners can show their support of Kroger’s corporate office and protest the local managers’ agenda by shopping while carrying.  You can signup for the even on the Ohio Open Carry page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1598973380389401/

Beginning March 23, gun owners will see a number of changes to regulations on firearms and concealed carry licensing in the Buckeye State.

Ohio House Bill 234, signed into law by Governor John Kasich Dec. 19, 2014, amends a number of the state’s previously standing gun statutes.

Ohioans with a valid concealed handgun license from another state will now have that license recognized by the State of Ohio if that state has entered into a reciprocity agreement with the Ohio Attorney General. Further, if the Attorney General determines that the eligibility requirements imposed by another state are “substantially comparable” to the eligibility requirements in Ohio, the other state’s license will now be recognized.

For new residents with a concealed handgun license from another state which has not entered into a reciprocity agreement, the out-of-state license will be recognized in Ohio for a period of six months after the person becomes a resident. After this six-month period, persons wishing to continue to conceal carry a handgun must apply for an Ohio license.

Non-Ohio residents with a valid concealed handgun license from another state, regardless of whether the other state has entered into a reciprocity agreement with Ohio, will have their license recognized in the state during the period that the person is temporarily in Ohio.

The new law also lessens the amount of training time needed to obtain a concealed carry license certification – from a total of 12 hours to 8 hours – and removes a provision that a would-be licensee be a resident of Ohio for at least 45 days and resident of their county for 30 days prior to applying for a license.

Ohio’s definition of what constitutes an “automatic firearm” has also been revised. Prior to the change, a semi-automatic firearm “designed or specially adapted to fire more than thirty-one cartridges without reloading, other than a firearm chambering only .22 calibers short, long, or long-rifle cartridges” was considered an automatic firearm.

As a result of the old law, many retailers, both in and out of state, refused to sell to Ohioans rifle and handgun magazines with a capacity of more than 30 rounds, thereby creating a de facto “ban” on these magazines, though the law did not clearly state that 30-plus-round magazines were banned.

The revised law reads “‘Automatic firearm’ means any firearm designed or specially adapted to fire a succession of cartridges with a single function of the trigger.” Thus, without mention of magazine capacity, for Ohioans there are no limits on how many cartridges a magazine may hold.

Another change for Buckeye gun owners is the repeal of the law which restricted residents to purchasing long guns only in Ohio and bordering states. As of March 23, Ohioans will now be able to purchase long guns – rifles and shotguns – from a federally licensed firearms dealer in any of the 50 states. As well, residents of all other states will now be able to purchase long guns from Ohio dealers. Handgun purchases by an individual, however, are still restricted by federal law to the state in which that person resides.

For Ohio hunting enthusiasts, the new law also replaces the word “silencer” with the more technically correct term “suppressor” and allows licensed hunters to use suppressors, greatly reducing a gun’s loud noise level.

A more detailed summary of the firearm-related changes taking place in Ohio beginning March 23 can be found online at http://www.lsc.ohio.gov/analyses130/14-hb234-130.pdf.

If you believe for a second that all those in favor of concealed carry also love the idea of constitutional and open carry, think again.  The “constitutional carry” bill passed the Kansas Senate is now in the State House and is on track of being passed.  Unfortunately some police officers and concealed carry instructors oppose the bill.

Mike Yoder, who is a police officer and also a concealed carry instructor is against the bill and believes that specialized training should be required before anyone can carry a gun in public.  Ironically, Yoder and other instructors who oppose the bill claim that they strongly support the 2nd amendment.

“Every bullet that leaves that gun, just consider there’s an attorney’s name on it,” says Yoder, following with “When you pull that trigger you’re responsible for every round that leaves that barrel.”

Yoder’s concerns are quite common and popular among firearms instructors who are mostly active or retired police officers and have tight control over the gun education market.  Many states require concealed carry instructors to be military or police members, almost creating a monopoly on gun educational services.

The fate of the bill remains to be seen.