Grizzly 45 wrote: »

EU INcompentency more like.
The Paris and Charlie Hebdo shootings wouldn't have happened if 8 years ago the EU had implemented the directive on proper EU wide deactivation of firearms.They sat on it and, almost seemed to wait for a massacre to happen before implementing it and demanding a host of other bans and restrictions. Fortunately, due to EU wide Shooters getting their dander up,it has been seriously watered down but is still a shambles being implemented on national levels.
What we would like to see changed here is.

License the man,not the gun.It would make changing your firearms and sales alot easier. Make the liscense a 10 year liscense too.

Remove the pistol ban on CF pistols post-Nov 2008.It is ridiculous and was implemented out of pure malignancy by an anti-gun minister. Likewise the IPSC competition ban.

Allow the right of properly certified and trained people who can justify a good need the right to concealed carry for self-protection.It exists in Northern Ireland,the Czech Republic, Germany, and surprisingly in the UK as well, if you are granted a permit by the Secretary of state,as "a person of value to HM Govt"If Ireland ever takes over Northern Ireland,ALL of those above issues will have to be addressed anyway,so it is not too outlandish.

A gun is a gun,is a gun. They are all dangerous if used incorrectly or with bad intent. Otherwise they are inert lumps of wood metal and plastic. There are no such especially dangerous types of guns out there. Therefore it should be possible to license anything here once you are declared competent and of good mind, everything from a .22 rifle up to a 20mm semi-auto sniper rifle. The onous and responsibility is on YOU an adult ,use it safely and correctly,not for society to be acting as a nanny in a kindergarten controlling dangerous things.

judestynes wrote: »

OK the "American" system differs depending on what state your in. Really what I would like once you meet the legal requirements laid out you can purchase and keep what ever you want outside of fully automatic select fire weapons. Make the laws easy to follow so not following them the individual is penalised severely not the community at large.

Sparks wrote: »

Well, to give an example that's down to an accident and is well within our competency to correct, it'd be nice if going paintballing wasn't a criminal offence in Ireland with a seven year jail sentence and a 20 grand fine as a maximum punishment.

I mean, I could give you a few dozen more, but that one seems to be the one that generally gets understood fastest by people who aren't target shooters or hunters.

troyzer wrote: »

Sounds like you both want the American system. I know that it varies by state, but it is guided by the principle that you have the right to own a gun and the restrictions are designed later. Whereas it seems to me that in Ireland, gun ownership is a privilege that you have to earn in advance.

I think both of you are being unrealistic if you think that the main impediment is a bunch of politicians. The public are apathetic towards this issue because it's very minor and our regulations are strict, but any sustained and effective campaign to liberalise gun laws will be shouted down by a much, much larger lobby which would pop up to defeat it.

A more realistic goal it seems to me would be to accept that semi autos are a no-go. It'll just never happen. So how do we make the rules fairer or more accessible?

gunny123 wrote: »

Why jump to the Americans all the time ? How about the swiss system ? All men of military age must hold a service rifle and be able to use it, plenty of government owned ranges around.
But the good ol' eussr want to put an end to that.

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Ok wrong on multiple points. Your last one first.

Semi-autos and I assume you mean rifles,as there are handguns and shotguns too are a GO.[Modern Sporting rifles,to give them their correct term] Even in Ireland. They are liscenseable here and are out there, and are becoming more and more popular throughout the Union. I am a member of Firearms United, and we fought long and hard in Brussels to make sure they will stay legal here.So sorry on that point.

Sorry if it sounds "unrealistic" to you, but the above points are valid and realistic and will be of concern to Ireland if we do unite. It might be unrealistic or moot to Paddy and Mary Blogs out there but becomes very valid when there are people demanding protection as they are still targets for subversives[like the current Garda chief comissioner] because of their pasts or associations in the NI troubles. Plus there are 100% justifiable rasons for some people to have a concealed carry permit even today in the Republic.

The majority of our bad gun laws here are because of either [1] Can kicking down the road attitudes and let it be someone else's problem. Hence we have the shambles of the aftermath of the TCO 1972 where the army will be forever more be storing on the taxpayers' dime, old handguns and rifles, because no one thought of what would happen if their owners died out,etc
2] Ignorance of the items being legislated on and trying quick fixes by banning things.
3] Bending to the mob and instead of acting like mature statesmen, slapping quick fixes on everything, rather than balanced and reasonable legislation.See UK for post-Hungerford/Dunblane.In comparison to Germany post-Erfurt and Wenidigen

And NO I don't want an "American system" which you haven't defined yet,as I pointed out it will not work in Europe and anyway any comparison of the US to Ireland in any aspect of life is a utter fallacy of an argument anyway.300 million people with well north of 450 million known firearms and a constitutional rifgt to keep and bear. Compared to 4.5 million with +/- 250, 000 liscensed guns is no comparison whatsoever.

Compare it more realistically to something in the EU.Czech Republic.Europes Texas. license system, concealed carry,full auto available to own.ZERO shooting sprees.Likewise Switzerland.

troyzer wrote: »

I've gone paintball? It's not a criminal offence?

Or do you mean unorganised paintball?

f we do have semi autos in Ireland, I stand corrected.

here definitely isn't a valid reason to have concealed carry in Ireland. Not when you weigh them against the risks of an increasingly armed society. The Garda comissioner doesn't need the right to a hidden Glock, I'm sure he has a security team.

Subversives are becoming less and less of a problem every year as the old farts die off. And I'm sure a better case could be made for better Gardaí protection of, particularly vulnerable people. Surely that's safer and more effective then saying people can arm for self-defence?

Some Random Eejit Years Ago wrote:

In contrast to this, the Firearms Act is frustratingly complex to read and there is no single rule book for everyone to look at. The judgements it calls for are highly subjective and how they are reached is opaque to the applicant. The decisions which affect us vary from issuing officer to issuing officer, so what is allowed and what is not under the Act is often a function of one's address, with no way to tell ahead of time what the decision might be. I am not even touching on the problems of those parts of Irish firearms law that are plainly daft, although we can discuss them if the committee wishes.

This might sound like a niche problem which affects a small number of sportspeople in a minority sport but it is not. It has an effect on the public in general. We have seen hundreds of District, High and Supreme Court cases over the last decade or so, many of which have as a fundamental cause a Firearms Act that is effectively unreadable to the average person. These cases not only represent enormous amounts of time, money and stress to shooters – the equivalent of building and equipping several badly-needed national-level shooting ranges – they also represent thousands of Garda man hours, millions of euro of public money, and the court's time, all of which are badly needed elsewhere, not arguing in a court over fiddly points of badly-written law with people who would rather be on the range taking part in our sport.

I have spent years involved in the legislative side of our sport which I regard that as time wasted and sporting opportunities lost. We had no choice but to be involved - even from the first days our sports were at risk of being crippled purely by oversight or misunderstandings in the drafting process - but there are far better uses for our resources. If we had clear, universal rules in the Act, that would be possible. The only way I know to get to that happy scenario from where we are now is, as I recommended in my submission, to undertake a restatement of the Firearms Act. Once we have the Act written clearly in one place, we can consider correcting some of its more obvious anomalies but until then, if we apply more patches to an already over-patched body of law, we will simply be confusing the situation even more than it currently is and will in all likelihood create more problems than we solve. If we go down that road, we will be back here again in a few years, with even more Garda man hours and public money and sporting resources lost as a result.

In the meantime, the average voter is even more in the dark about what protections the law provides them and, given how the media portray problems like gun crime, this can be nothing but a source of fear. Good law should reassure people by showing that a potential risk is understood and a fair system exists to govern it. The Firearms Act at present fails woefully in this task because almost nobody really knows what is in it. I therefore urge the committee to reject the review's proposals in their current form and to recommend that the Firearms Act be restated to give us a known baseline from which to work. I ask the committee to recommend that those changes - whose necessity will be clear and obvious to everyone - be worked on by all the stakeholders together, to produce a clear, readable, boringly consistent law which everybody understands and can follow. The first Firearms Act stood unamended for almost 40 years because it had those characteristics

Random Eejit again wrote:

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On the question as to what changes we would make, having studied this for ten years or so – ten years I would like to get back, to be entirely honest – there are definitely things that are broken. For example, it is not right that since 2009, those at stag party paint-balling in Wicklow for a weekend are committing a breach of the Firearms Act. Technically, that requires them to be put in jail for seven years and fined €20,000, along with everybody who works in the companies that run these services. I do not think anybody would think that is a great way to have the law. If hunters going out to shoot rabbits for the pot take a shot before they start hunting the rabbits to ensure their sights are aligned, that is technically target shooting outside of an authorised range, which is illegal act. The Minister for Justice and Equality at the time said afterwards that was an unintentional mistake in the law. There are many errors in the law to which we can point and that is really awful. There is the Firearms Act 1925 and there are eight more Acts which amend parts of it. Nothing has ever been repealed. There are another 12 Acts which have parts in them which define the behaviour target shooters and hunters are supposed to follow, including the Wildlife Acts, the Airports Act and the Explosives Act, which covers the reloading shooters do. There are Acts from before the foundation of State, including both of the Explosives Acts. The Summary Jurisdiction (Ireland) Act 1851 still applies. It relates to how far away from a road one has to be before one can start hunting bunnies. There is no single place a person starting off in the sport can go to see what the rules are to which they must adhere. Before we start to make any changes to these things, and there is a list, we need to have a solid base from which to work.

What has to be done is that all of those nine or ten Acts, which amended the Firearms Act, need to be restated under a Statute Law (Restatement) Act 2002. That was called for by the Law Reform Commission in 2004 and by Mr. Justice Charleton in the High Court a few years ago but it has never been done. The Law Reform Commission has prepared informal restatements of these Acts. The only textbook ever written on firearms law in Ireland, which was only just published last year, has a restatement in one of the appendices but that is not the same thing as a restatement of the Act under the law, because at that point, we would take all that has gone before it, repeal it and replace it with the Firearms Act, as amended, and we would have a single document to which we could all go.

If we do that, then we can start to talk about the fairly silly things in it that need to be fixed. For example, if I am doing my Christmas shopping and I walk into a popular shop in a popular shopping centre and see a shelf full of toy crossbows being sold – they are obviously toys and are meant for firing suction darts at walls and so on - under the current Firearms Act, they are restricted firearms.

These are obviously toys and meant for firing suction darts at walls and this kind of thing. Under the current Firearms Act, these are restricted firearms and need to be licensed. If a person does not have a licence for it, he or she faces seven years in jail and €20,000 in fines. This is beyond silly.

gunny123 wrote: »

Don't worry Sparks, Sinn fein will sort it all out when they get into power :eek:.

judestynes wrote: »

They thought they'd be allowed back into starbucks with their AR's over their shoulders

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Probably so that their buddies that SF had "no connection whatsoever with, ever, seriously!" could pop in some time at 3AM with a few shorts and relive the whole arsenal stored there in a nice big fat target?