Its an old number from 2008, completely made up, from Gunpolicy. We have tried, in vain, to dismiss this nonsense of a number. It was arrived at by calculating the total number of registered gun owners in Ireland and the gunpolicy used an algorithim to calculate the estimated number of illegal guns and then added the two together to come up with that bastardisation.

Its used because it makes for better headlines than the actual number of 3%. The reason for our dismissive attitude [towards that number] is they claim there are over 155,000 illegal guns in Ireland. This number comes from the algorithim mentioned above that is used in other countries such as America, etc. and simply not functional in Ireland where the gun laws are so, SO, much stircter and tightly controlled. Its akin to saying Ireland has 530 shooting deaths a year simply because of the average gun deaths in America, adjusted for population size when in fact we don't have even 5% of that (average over ten years from 2005 to 2015 based on CSO figures which are unreliable at best, by their own admission).

Same with Wikipedia. You look at any "gun" or "murder" article by country and the ownership rate for Ireland is always given as between 7 to 8% which is 2.3 to 2.6 times higher than it really is. Its another case of legla gun owners being lumped in with criminality. Same with any recent legislation, we're always "thrown into" some Criminal justice act instead of a stand alone firearms act such as the original 1925 act. Its a little insulting to be honest.