Gardaí to seize 3,000 guns under amnesty

civdef

Irish Examiner

03/01/06


By Shaun Connolly, Political Correspondent
GARDAÍ expect more than 3,000 illegal firearms will be handed over in the up-coming amnesty ahead of tough new anti-gun laws.

Automatic minimum jail terms of between five and 10 years for a range of weapons’ offences are set to be approved by the Oireachtas before the summer as part of the Criminal Justice Bill.

The move is aimed at cracking down on Ireland’s spiralling “gun culture” which left 19 people dead last year in gangland shootings alone.

The offences to carry mandatory minimum sentences include possession of a firearm in suspicious circumstances, with intent to endanger life or while hijacking a vehicle, and production of a firearm to resist arrest.

The Government intends to offer a month long amnesty in which people can surrender unlicensed guns before the new clampdown comes into force.




An amnesty in Britain in 2003, following the New Year’s Day drive-by shooting dead of two teenage girls, netted 44,000 firearms and one million rounds of ammunition.

Adjusted for population difference, gardaí expect the haul in the Republic to be similar, resulting in around 3,000 weapons and 70,000 rounds.

A garda source said: “Generally we have more shotguns per head of population than the UK because of the much bigger farming sector. They are robbed from farm houses and then used again in other burglaries, an awful lot of guns have been stolen over the years. “More than 600 firearms were seized in 2004 through normal investigations. The amount of illegal weapons in the country that weren’t seized is anyone’s guess.”

Gardaí are concerned about the level of guns coming into the State from the continent and the fact they only intercept a “fraction” of them.

“It is certainly difficult to quantify how much is coming into the country. With so many people travelling in and out it’s not possible to search every vehicle coming in. The ones that are seized in investigations and searches are probably just a fraction of the illegal weapons in the country.”

In 2004, gardaí seized 358 shotguns, 164 riffles, 70 pistols, 21 revolvers, 19 machine guns, 53 replica guns and 88 pellet guns.

Gardaí have high hopes the tough new penalties for possession will drive up the total to be handed in. The move will allow people with unlicensed or unregistered firearms and weapons to hand them over to gardaí to avoid prosecution.

Justice Minister Micheal McDowell said the amnesty would not apply to guns used in crimes.

Vegeta

Comparing England to Ireland IMO just doesn't make sense

Clare gunner

WHAT A LOAD OF OLD TRIPE!!!!
first off the UK has ALWAYS had more shotguns either section 1FAC or shotgun cert than Ireland had or ever will.On the simple fact of pouplation figures alone.Not to mind there are more farmers in the UK than Ireland ever had.Plus the 44K "firearms" handed in were intrestingly,deacts,air weapons,softairs,and a few keepsakes from ww2 that had been forgotten in closets by old folks.Most of the ammo was airgun ammo

Plus the Gardai/article/publicity stunt is being very disengenous in the fact it is giving the illusion that you will be able to hand in anything anynomouslywith no questions asked.YEAH RIGHT!!!All firearms handed in will be ballistically tested to see wether they have been used in crimes.Anyone handing anything else will be questioned as to where and why they aquired it.Wouldnt be surprised if suddenly the figures for arrests for unliscensed firearms goes up there and then.[You are arrested at the station for possesion of an unliscensed firearm] So I can see every PO blagger handing over their sawn off or illegal AK with no problem and fessing up to all their crimes.The amnesty will not remove one gun that really matters.IE a criminally possed gun by somone with the intent to commit a crime.All this will get rid of are proably old war trophies,deacts and air weapons.

Same way operation anvil has become a car tax check up rather than disrupting Dublin gangs from moving their firepower about.
Basically this is another publicity stunt by our min of justice/Gardai to be seen to be "doing somthing",to stop "gun crime" and other buzz words.Funny it didnt work with knives and the bin the blade campain.One wonders how they expect this to work with guns.

civdef

first off the UK has ALWAYS had more shotguns either section 1FAC or shotgun cert than Ireland had or ever will.On the simple fact of pouplation figures alone.

the Garda source quoted said "per head of population", which is probably correct.

Sparks

Doesn't make much sense to me. I would have thought that the largest source of illegally-held firearms here would be airsoft guns that people bought as toys; and the CJB makes them legally toys rather than firearms, so they won't even be touched. As to handing in stolen firearms, you'd have to be daft to expect that.

Odds are, we'll see the family shotgun that was stored rusting away in a shed somewhere without a licence since grandfather passed away twenty years ago being turned in, and that's about it really. I can't see a wave of AKs and pistols being handed in by gangs in Limerick and Dublin!

Clare gunner

civdef wrote:

the Garda source quoted said "per head of population", which is probably correct.

Nope,some of the figures on shotgun certs in the UK put our entire shooting community in the little leauge.It was pre Hungerford days around 250kplus in England alone on shotgun cert.Post Hungerford,when they started monkeying the figures that any shotgun over three shot capacity became a Firearm section one class weapon it naturally dropped with a small corrosponding rise in applications for FACsfor the multi shot.A good few went and are still unaccounted for.Most likely under floorboards around the UK.Yet the UK police claimed this was a "significant" reduction in shotun certs.

So we have how many registerd firearms here?And that is not a singular one man per gun,some of us are multi liscense holders holding three or more liscenses.The Uk it is a one man liscensed to hold X number of guns situation,which would make it easier to establish a truer picture of how many firearms cert holders there is.All in all it will be on shotgun and FAC certs in the Uk well over still 180k.So I still maintain that Garda is talking out his you know what.
As Mark Twain said there are three type of lies.Lies ,damn lies ,and statstics."

Sparks

Clare gunner wrote:

So we have how many registerd firearms here?

Around 210-220,000 or so. Of which something like 160,000+ are shotguns, 50,000+ are rifles and we have under a thousand pistols last I heard.

civdef

Theres around 230k licensed firearms here. We have a population of 3.8 million or thereabouts.

According to this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/578750.stm there were 295,100 licenced firearms in the UK in 1999, with a population pushing 60 million.

Do the maths!

EDIT WITH UPDATED RESEARCH:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00336-00.asp 60,440 firearms, 125,395 shotguns

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hosb0905.pdf - 342,213 firearms, 1,372,712 shotguns,

so that makes 1,900,760 firearms with a population of 60 million.

Approximate no. of Firearms per head of population:

Ireland: 0.061

Britain: 0.032

So we have about twice as many guns in Ireland per head of population compared to Britain.

QED

Riggser

Sparks wrote:

As to handing in stolen firearms, you'd have to be daft to expect that.

I think it is for people who are not in possesion of the stolen or illegal firearms but who know of there storage and want to be rid of them.

Sparks

But how would you prove that it wasn't you that stole the firearm Riggser? It'd look quite suspicious to saunter into the local garda station with a stolen shotgun and claim that you'd just found it while out walking, because you'd be handing it in under an amnesty rather than as a case of lost&found property - implying you knew something of its nature.

Basicly, if you know of a stolen/illegal firearm that you don't personally possess, you need no amnesty to turn it in; and if you do possess one, you're not likely to turn it in if it's stolen, and most of the illegal firearms will be things like airsoft guns (not illegal after the CJB goes through); antiques and curios like pen guns and so on (which wouldn't be around in any great quantity) or old family shotguns that have been kept for years in the attic or shed after the owner died but without any licence.

Of course, we could use the amnesty to turn in all our empty .303 brass unless we've a licence for it, or our bullet board display cases or whatever... :rolleyes:

scout

Slightly off topic but are airsoft legal in CjB thaught limit was one joule (1 joule = 0.737562149 foot pound) are airsoft more powerful than dis thaught they were??

Sparks

Most airsoft guns would be under one joule scout, or at least so I thought.

Clare gunner

civdef wrote:

Theres around 230k licensed firearms here. We have a population of 3.8 million or thereabouts.

According to this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/578750.stm there were 295,100 licenced firearms in the UK in 1999, with a population pushing 60 million.

Do the maths!

EDIT WITH UPDATED RESEARCH:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00336-00.asp 60,440 firearms, 125,395 shotguns

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hosb0905.pdf - 342,213 firearms, 1,372,712 shotguns,

so that makes 1,900,760 firearms with a population of 60 million.

Approximate no. of Firearms per head of population:

Ireland: 0.061

Britain: 0.032

So we have about twice as many guns in Ireland per head of population compared to Britain.

QED

Not quite.The comparison of the basis is still false.We are not comparing like with like.How can you compare the UK with 60million to 4+/- million in Ireland?
Better comparison would be with a European country of Irelands pouplation.Plus in the figures produced there Civ in actual physical numbers the UK has 2 million firearms compared to our 230 thousand.So if those figures were to be compared to say Belguim or Denmark we would be pretty thin on armaments compared to countries close to our pouplation size.
But it always seems to be we have to compare ourselves to the UK.

Edit one other fact.
Also here in Ireland we include items as firearms that the UK does not.IE air weapons uder the 12ft/lb rule,crossbows,blank firers,paintball ,deacts,as matter of fact anything that discharges a missile.So compared again to actual "real" firearms we again would be considerably less armed than the uK.

civdef

How can you compare the UK with 60million to 4+/- million in Ireland?

Well measuring per head of population seems like a good way of achieving exactly that to me.

chem

With blank fire pistols to become "firearms" under the new laws i think most of what will be handed in are these. I know of alot of places that will sell them over the counter and have been for years. So there are prob 1000`s out there and all soon to become a 5-10 year jail term ticket to the owners.

It will look very impressive for the cameras, a warehouse floor covered with modern semi auto pistols and little mention that infact they only make a loud noise!

thelurcher

An amnesty is not going to take the guns that matter off the streets as the Guards well know - there's too much money to be made out of them - and I mean clean unused ones - which are what the criminals are using.
Guns are moving with drugs etc now as just another product - heard prices of €3000 for a 'guaranteed' unused handgun - ripoff Ireland extends to the underworld also :rolleyes:

Gun nut

I am sure by the time the guards and crapbag media get finished with these airsoft guns and blank firers , they will have become high powered military weapons capable of firing 1000 rounds per minute with a range of three miles.And McDowell will be the saviour of civilisation.