Small arms report - Ireland gets a mention

cp251

Someone mentioned this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070828/us_nm/world_firearms_dc_1

I went to the relevant website and read it. Lo and behold Ireland got a mention. It makes interesting reading.

Apparently there are an estimated 150,000 unregistered firearms in the country. But, and this is interesting the Garda are only really interested in the 5000 or so in the hands of the criminals.:eek:

150,000 unregistered guns? That's a lot. A bit speculative I thought.

http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/files/sas/publications/year_b_pdf/2007/CH2%20Stockpiles.pdf

It's PDF so here's the bit on Ireland.

Box 2.2 Ireland: isolated no longer
Long an active participant in international small arms diplomacy, the Republic of Ireland used to act more out of a sense of
international responsibility than domestic need (Ireland, 2005). Insulated by geography and culture, gun problems were
assumed to be something that happened elsewhere. This sense is changing rapidly. By international standards, Ireland still
has relatively little gun crime, but the country is acutely aware that old assumptions no longer hold true. No country, it seems,
is isolated from global trends.
Previously, Irish small arms problems were associated exclusively with terrorism in Northern Ireland. This declined sharply
following the Downing Street Declaration of 1993. With most Irish Republican Army (IRA) weapons reportedly ‘decommissioned’
under the terms of the April 1998 Belfast Agreement, the underlying small arms problem seemed to be resolved. In September
2005 the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning reported that ‘the IRA has met its commitment to put
all its arms beyond use in a manner called for by the legislation’ (IICD, 2005, p. 2; see also BBC, 2005). Although scepticism
about IRA decommissioning remains, an era of violence seems to be at an end.
Instead of Northern Ireland, now it is the Republic of Ireland that is feeling the effects of criminal gun violence. Historically,
its gun laws were restrictive. Handguns were banned in the early 1970s. The Firearms and Wildlife Act of 1976 banned highcalibre
rifles and repeating shotguns (Cusack, 1996). Despite these measures, in the early 2000s the Irish police (the Garda
Síochána) were reporting steep increases in gun crime. Absolute numbers were low by international standards—from 450
firearm offences in 2001, increasing to 600 in 2002—but the change was a shock (Breslin, 2004). By 2006 the press were
describing the phenomenon as an ‘epidemic’ of gun crime (Emigrant Online, 2006). Officials began to speak of an emerging
‘gun culture’ (Connolly, 2006).
The problem, as described by Justice Minister Michael McDowell, is
Drug dealing is dealing in death, firearms possession is dealing in death. And they are to be regarded in my view both by
An Garda Síochána, by the legislature, by Government and by the judiciary as people who are potential or actual murderers.
They are in the business of homicide, be it delayed or threatened or actual. They must be dealt with as that, they must be
dealt with by the same severity and the same degree of energy as the paramilitaries were in the past (UTV, 2006).
Despite restrictions, Ireland is not unarmed: shotguns are relatively common. Garda spokespersons said that their 2006
amnesty was based on the assumption that the rate of public gun ownership in Ireland is roughly the same as in Britain
(Connolly, 2006), but the number of licences suggests that legal ownership is considerably higher. In England and Wales
there are 1.5 million licences for individual gun owners, one for every 28 residents (Ellis and Coleman, 2006). It has been
reported that Ireland issued 209,000 firearm licences in 2004, one for every 19 residents (O’Keeffe and Hogan, 2004).
Unregistered weapons are estimated to number at least 150,000, and this figure could be considerably higher, for a total of
at least 360,000 firearms in civilian control.
Garda spokespersons maintain that the organization’s most serious concern is not traditional shotgun ownership, but an
invasion of handguns and automatics smuggled in from Europe. Of greatest concern are some 5,000 firearms in the hands of
criminal gangs (McDonald, 2006). Many are semi-automatic pistols and sub-machine guns, previously unknown in public hands
(Clonan, 2005). They have fueled unprecedented, murderous rivalries among drug gangs. Small arms proliferation appears to
be an unexpected consequence of integration into a border-free Europe, leaving national leaders and law enforcement officials
struggling to cope (Mulqueen, 2007).
The official reaction has been threefold: a police crackdown on smuggling, an amnesty for illegal firearms, and expansion
and possible rearming of police. Under Operation Anvil, about 800 illegal firearms are seized annually and illegal firearm
possession and misuse are kept down, with 715 seizures in 2005 (Garda Síochána, 2006, pp. 23, 80; Lally, 2006). An amnesty in
2006 was expected to net 3,000 guns, projected from the number received by English and Welsh police in a similar amnesty
(Connolly, 2006). Instead, only 562 were received (McDonald, 2006). Finally, the Garda are increasing the number of officers
and weighing demands that more be armed: currently 3,000 out of 12,265 officers are qualified to carry guns (Garda Síochána,
2006, p. 4; Sunday Business Post, 2006).
These steps will help Ireland deal with rising gun crime, but they have been tried elsewhere and found wanting. It is hard
to avoid the conclusion that Ireland is becoming more like the rest of the world in terms of firearm-related problems.

What do you think lads?

Sparks

I'd love to hear where that 150,000 came from. And they're wrong about handguns being banned - they never actually were, you just couldn't get a licence; and I don't know what they're on about with the wildlife act banning centrefire rifles...

At least they're not painting us as the problem, but are looking at criminal abuse of firearms instead. That's a start...

N.O.I.P.

In relation to the comparison between British and Irish legal firearms ownership rates does Britain not operate a OMOL policy?

I seriously doubt that there are 150,000 unregistered firearms in the country maybe those figures were calculated before the amendments made by the CJB in 06. Still though if there really is that many then shouldn't they all be of concern to the Gardai not just the suspected 5000 in criminal hands.

It was a good read, I'll have to go through the whole PDF at some point. Thanks for posting it up.

stevoman

i bet there could well be anything up to that number, you never know. the sad thing is its just not hard to buy a hand gun illegally. from my experience from talking to people who have been offered them illegally and such it is a rapidly growing problom, in fact its actually now easier to get your hands on a hangun illegally than legally if you even half know the right person. THIS IS DANGEROUS, and the goverment needs to step up to this problom and nip it in the bud.

in my opinion the gardai and department of justice should use their heads on this one and look at the most logic answer to these probloms........
and thats easy - BASE OUR GUN CRIME LEVELS ON NOT WHAT THEY ARE NOW, BUT WHAT THEY ARE LIKE IN THE U.K AT THE MOMENT.

anyone can see that whatever happens in england society wise always bears the same trends here 5 to 8 years later. what the DOJ and the guards must really do is look at the probloms they are facing now in the uk with rapid rising gun crime, and get a solution and a plan up and going to reduce gun crime going by worst case scenarios in the uk.

at least thats my opinion, but i am sure thrends will follow here just like that of the uk's and if they use their heads they will be able to solve this problem before it spirals out of control

maglite

IRA dumps?

rrpc

The unlicensed numbers seem way off kilter. I suspect that these figures come from estimates of paramilitary weapons which hasn't been updated to take account of recent decommissioning.

The usual mistake has been made with regard to licensing in the UK as a comparison with here when no such comparison can be made. What they need to do is look at the number of licensed firearms in the UK and compare that with here to get a valid reflection of the situation.

I would suspect that the numbers are more in line and possibly higher in the UK, especially if you add airguns to the equation.