possessing a cross bow and arrows and an air pistol.

Robert Mello, 21, of Smith's Parish admitted possession of a firearm, namely a .177 calibre air pistol.

But he denied having the cross bow, a prohibited weapon in Bermuda, because it was disassembled and missing two critical parts when Customs officers found it in his luggage at the airport last June 27.

He had arrived on an Air Canada flight.

Mello told Police he brought the two weapons here because he had no place in Canada to keep them, the court heard.

Prosecutor Insp. Peter Duffy argued a disassembled cross bow minus the arm string and a screw to secure the trigger mechanism was still an illegal weapon in Bermuda.

Police firearms officer and armourer P.c. Stuart Kirkpatrick told the court the two missing parts could easily be obtained on the Island.

It was also easy to assemble them on the cross bow.

The cross bow could not be fired in the state that it was discovered in Mello's luggage, P.c. Kirkpatrick agreed.

But a small screw and string or gut, available at any local hardware store, was all that was needed to enable one of Mello's small dart-like arrows to be fired.

Insp. Duffy said the question was, did the absence of the screw and string make the item no longer a cross bow? Under cross examination, P.c. Kirkpatrick agreed with Mello's lawyer Ms Keren Lomas that the missing parts were not in Mello's possession.

She further argued that Bermuda law only prohibited a whole cross bow. By contrast British firearms laws specifically include "and any component part'' of a cross bow.

It may be that Bermuda's firearms laws need amending to be more specific, she said.

But as they were now, her client was innocent of possessing a prohibited firearm because he only had in his luggage disassembled pieces of a cross bow minus two parts.

Magistrate the Wor. Charles Etta-Simmons reserved judgment until next Friday.