We don't have an anti-gun lobby as such because up to now, guns weren't in the public eye and no pistols were in circulation except up North and in the hands of criminals. However, that has meant that all firearms are now seen as being suspect by the majority of the uneducated-about-firearms public.

So, while IANSA has been launched here, it's never had anything to sink it's teeth into really, up till now.

The politician (opposition or not) who hears of anyone going near combat pistol shooting though - that's the real worry.

Glock, all this talk about hanging together lest we hang seperately is of very little comfort when there are nooses around all our necks already and some of us are jumping up and down on that trapdoor as hard as they can....

Glock, if you have a realistic idea about how to get the politicians to allow us to have any kind of firearm we want, an idea that actually has a chance of working, then sing out now.

Otherwise, the best course of action remains securing as much as we can, rather than demanding everything. Remember please, WE DON'T HAVE A RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, and everything in this sport is affected as a direct result, including how we defend the sport's interests.

I can tell you right now, if we walked into McDowell's office and demanded that he not amend the Firearms Acts, when his press briefing already said he would, we wouldn't get anywhere. He's committed publicly to amending the Acts, and if you think he'd lose face backing off on that at the behest of a tiny minority who cannot offer him "compensation" for doing so, you must have missed the last few years of politics in Ireland!

Make no mistake Glock, the axe is falling - our actions now are pretty much limited to influencing where it falls, not if it falls.

And the previous post has got what to do exactly with my suggestion that we stop calling each other gun nuts, and worry about very fetching ladies holding various different types of firearms????????

Nothing, it was instead to do with the "hang together" comments.

I think we have more to worry about than <snip> whom reads the shooting mag.

You mean that the fact that the Gardai and DoJ read the Digest shouldn't influence how we describe them in the Digest or how we write in it?

We should be reading up on the Garda Review,and whatever passes for an inhouse political party mag in Ireland.

Some of us have been doing so for years.

UNITE all the shooting bodies of Ireland under an umbrella organisation

Won't work right now. Been tried. I could regale you for some time with tales of wrongdoing just on the rifle side of the house when it comes to umbrella bodies, but it wouldn't contribute more to the discussion than the simple fact that umbrella bodies only make things more convienent for the Sports Council - they do not automatically encourage more efficency for those actually in the bodies, and frankly, have done more ill than good to date.

ACCEPT that there are going to have to be some cheifs and alot of indians.

Ah, but who gets to be chief? And what if Chief doens't like the idea of IPSC, or something else you personally want to see? Will you remain a happy Indian then?

Let me simplify this as much as possible.we all have one thing in common.We all own GUNS.

And the GAA, IRFU and FAI all play team sports on a pitch with a ball and with broadly similar rules. I don't see them being encouraged to form an umbrella body, nor can I see them all banding together for the benefit of team sports that use a ball on a pitch...

To those who dont want us to have them ALL GUNS ARE BAD!!!!! THEREFORE we require NOT to be alienating people whom we might not like,have issues with as to what type of shooting they do,what type of gun they have,what type of clothes they wear at shooting ranges,what pictures they look at etc.In the end they are required as they are voices,votes and fellow GUNowners.

Horse hockey.
I've got nothing in common with gunowners like Hamilton or Ryan or McCarthy, and have no intention of ever encouraging anyone to think so. The simple fact is that there are people out there with firearms who shouldn't have them. Deny it at your own peril - because the "other side" you keep alluding to will know this and will use it against you and then what will you do?

EMPLOY the best for the job of cheifs.

I've been recommending the hiring of a PR firm for our PR for three straight years. Trouble is, hiring means giving money for services - and we don't have the money.

FINANCE this organisation properly.In this day and age everyone of us should be able to cough up 200 euros plus per annum to support our shooting.If you cant,well you deserve to lose it.

I thought we were all gunowners - not just the ones who had 200 euro to give? And are you including the college students (all 800 or so of them between DURC and UCDRC), the juniors and the OAPs in with the "must give 200 euro" bunch?

Besides which, I've been trying to get advertising to pay for the NTSA newsletter for years. I'm not talking about trying to get a donation to charity here - I'm talking about selling colour adverts to gun dealers in a newsletter that goes to almost a hundred individual target shooters and fifteen clubs (meaning many more individuals), all of whom spend money buying equipment and supplies for target shooting. Logically, it's quite a deal - but I've managed to get precisely three people to agree to buy advertising in the newsletter in three years, only one of whom is still doing so - the rest comes out of my pocket. Reaching for the wallet is something Irish shooters seem to do slowly Now I don't mind paying for it myself so much, but it's hardly a stable way to do things - what if I get hit by a Luas tomorrow?

On top of that, paying less than a quarter of what you're talking about for membership of shooting associations is begrudged by shooters - as the other threads in this forum are showing. So what you're talking about is highly unlikely. Plus, you've given no budget - so what's that money going to be spent on?

ORGANISE the manpower you now have to be able to respond from doing letter writing campains to counter the antis,to if need be a demo in any major city.

The last letter-writing campaign was to the Tribune - and it backfired because instead of a deluge of polite letters pointing out that they'd gotten an article wrong, they got a torrent of abusive messages and rants and stopped listening to anyone in the shooting associations.

The current one is to the DoJ regarding the Firearms Acts. Is your letter in yet? And why not post it in the thread sticky in this forum if it is?

As to demos, well, the USAF is still using Shannon, isn't it?

Organise that if anyone wants to launch a legal challenge there is financial backing ,[up to a point,]legal assistance that is gun law savvy to help them.

That would be FLAG you're talking about, the Firearms Legislation Action Group. When it was started, I was one of the first to put hand in pocket, even though I had damn little money (being a student) to do so with. And now, several years later, I've never received any information from FLAG regarding their status or activities that I didn't get from the papers or from emails sent to an email list I'm not on, despite repeated requests to the man running FLAG for information and repeated requests to add me to that list. And for those years, they've been trying to beat the DoJ and the Gardai over the head using the Firearms Acts and the High and Supreme Courts. Which, in this country, is like picking a fight with a building.

Three guesses as to my opinion of them?

KNOW YOUR ENEMY.

Enough with the hobbsian outlook! We don't have an enemy worth worrying about in the sense you're thinking of. The ICaBS aren't a real threat, they don't have enough clout. The GCN don't exist here. IANSA isn't even looking at us, they have only at the most a token presence here.

The thing we have to fight, is the poor level of knowlege of target shooting in the DoJ and Gardai - and you don't do that by antagonistic or confrontational methods. The simple fact is that your "enemy" is a civil servant who doesn't shoot, has little idea of target shooting, has little training in firearms, but does have his or her ass on the line whenever firearms stuff comes up, because their nightmare is a Dunblane or Abbylara that happened because of a law they had a hand in - so they continually play it safe. And until you're paying their morgage and putting food on their table so they don't have to worry about losing their jobs, you don't have a right to criticise them for that. What you can do is show them that we're Safe and Harmless and that we don't need much from them to let us go off and win medals for Ireland.

Know EVERYTHING about the current /future minister of Justice.From the moment he was born to what he had for breakfast today.

While I get the birthday thing, I don't see why we should put a telescope in his window - at best, it'd be useless info, at worst, it'd get you arrested!
I'm amused you think we don't know a fair amount about him though - mind you, since we mostly get to deal with Willie O'Dea instead of McDowell, I think you're looking at the wrong person...

Know everything about which politico is pro or anti the gun /hunting issue. Know what the gun statistics are here in crime.Actually I am AMAZED that no one has even thought of doing this in ANY of the Irish shooting organisations.

Stop being amazed, they have been doing this for a while. Just because we haven't sent in an FOI request from the NTSA doesn't mean we've not been following everything they print!

Supposing one day one of these people become Min of justice?wouldnt somthing like that be a good bargining chip it it was leaked to some hopefully pro gun journalist who can pass it to a pro gun editor?

So your plan is to monitor a bunch of yahoos who have no realistic chance of becoming Ministers, in order to blackmail them if they do?

Sparks ,you have said enough times that everyone went in with all o r nothing attitude into negoations with various Min of Js. Did anyone have a Plan B?

So far as I know, no. But that doesn't mean that there definitely wasn't one, just that I wasn't privy to it.

To deal with point one.Never let the other guy know your hand.

This isn't poker. The DoJ and Gardai have more information on our "hand" than we do... and they get to rewrite the rules if they want.
This is more like Jenga than poker - the object is to get what you want with a minimum of disturbance.

Pt two.Anyone we send in there must be a skilled negoiatior with one agenda.

Apart from the fact that skilled negotiatiors don't grow on trees, there's the fact that to ensure the "one agenda" bit, you'd need a contract!

For anyone wondering how sensitive the whole thing is, take a peek at this example from the UK. Some of you may have seen the advert for the Landrover Freelander where the wife takes a starter pistol from a drawer and fires it as the husband heads off to work. A total of 348 people (out of the 50-odd million in the UK, a total of approximately .00696%) complained to OFCOM. They banned the advert as a result. Now advertising campaigns are serious money, and this was a UK company (one of their most famous in fact) putting in the advert - so you can imagine therefore, that this was not a trivial incident!

Since he was architet in parts of the 1992 firearms amendment I really must ask him about the sound modifier and nite sight issues.Seems a bit naive on gun issues.

Well, I've never seen him down the range, so it wouldn't surprise me. Mostly these people have as much experience in firearms as we do in law...

No ,my plan is not to blackmail anyone.Just have information who might be stuffing brown paper envelopes into their pockets,and what people they associate with.

And what else would you do with that information?!?!?!

I wouldnt describe any of them as yahoos.

I wouldn't describe all of them that way - but a portion of them most assuredly are, as are a portion of us!

Skilled negotionars can be got if people want to pay for them.[not going to happen]As for the contract,this would lie back to the having a proper unified policy on what we want. [not going to happen]

Yup.

FLAG
I dont know whats going on there either .The last PR I got from them was 2002.

That's more than I got, and I'm on the NTSA committee and have been deputised into the NRPAI committee on occasion - and FLAG is a part of the NRPAI!

Highly laudable except it can be seen as me feinism[my theory on what happened with the rifle issue in 94?]

Yes, but the thing is that nothing suceeds like success. Get a shooting organisation to stop mucking about and actually get down to the business of promoting shooting and investing in the sport and pushing coaching and so on, and you'll find it's popularity will eventually rise.
Do that long enough, and eventually you'll find the snowball effect kicks in.

i still hold that if somthing bad does happen here.We will lose ALL of the handguns,and large calibre stuff..and it will be irrespective of what kind of safe and harmless disipline you are involved in it will go. all we can do is try and weed out the bad apples[an impossible task INMO] in any disipline.

Indeed. And of course, in that situation, we'll find we have no PR company to do crisis management, no lobbying plan to work by, and while we're caught on the hop, other, less contemplative people will try their hand at defending shooting - and the anti-gun groups will be watching for them because they are the real weakness in such situations. Not because they have bad intentions or even because of incompetence, but because they don't have the support mechanisms, the research, or the planning done for such an exercise and it becomes fish-in-a-barrel time...

On a intresting note,it seems the hanguns lic requirement sofar is club membership and secure storage.Seems agreeable enough.until we hear what secure storage will comprise,and what or where the clubs will be defined as.

Well, the secure storage requirement is down to the local superintendent according to the amendment, and there's no definition of what a club comprises.