LAHORE: Lahore police have arrested 5,934 suspects and registered 5,880 cases this year in a campaign against illegal weapons, public display of firearms and celebratory gunfire, seizing more than 5,500 guns, the vast majority of them pistols.
The haul included more than 5,000 pistols, 217 revolvers, 145 guns, 123 rifles and 49 Kalashnikovs, a police spokesperson said on Monday.
Capital City Police Officer Bilal Siddique Kamyana said the force had a zero-tolerance policy on illegal possession and misuse of firearms. He ordered strict action against people buying and selling weapons illegally and against “dala culture”, the practice of influential people moving with armed escorts in pickup trucks.
He also directed officers to act against aerial firing without exception and to monitor people who show off weapons on social media, saying no leniency would be shown to anyone who endangered public safety.
Celebratory firing has long killed and maimed bystanders at weddings, festivals and sporting victories. Lahore police arrested more than 2,700 people for aerial firing alone in the first nine and a half months of 2025, and recent arrests have included a man behind viral weapon-display videos in Mozang.
The crackdown is part of a broader push to regulate weapons in Punjab, which has moved arms dealers’ records online and is working with NADRA to issue digital arms licences.
Asked by The Lahore Times how many of the 5,880 cases had resulted in convictions, and how many seized weapons were licensed but misused, the police declined to comment. Without those figures, the crackdown’s results can be counted in arrests but not yet in outcomes.
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