01 2083111 You can phone in too and give out about it too in the nicest possible way;)
Pass it on to at least three other shooters and this will take legs as well.

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

A third party has lodged a formal and detailed complaint about the programme.

:rolleyes:

That was some disgrace last night to add to a litany of disgraces.
My twopence worth sent to the BAI and RTE's complaints for all the good it'll do:

Dear Sir/Madam,
I write to complain about the biased, cheap, tabloid nature of RTE's Primetime's report on firearms licensing on last night, the 10th of March 2015. It was one-sided as it strove to blur the lines between licensed, legal sporting and hunting activity and, so called, 'gangland' murders and mass shootings in other countries (where failures by the police resulted in unstable people being licensed; a fact not mentioned in the report) . The interviews and report were emotive coupled with menacing music and sound effects in the background.
The report fatuously suggests that any unsolved gun murders may have been carried out with stolen, previously legally held firearms. This is extremely unlikely considering the small numbers of the relevant firearms which have been officially reported stolen and the large quantity which are known to be illegally imported and those that remain from 'the Troubles', etc. The veracity of Garda/Dept. of Justice figures which were used in the piece has been undermined only recently in the Dail when the Minister for Justice had to concede that of ~1700 reported firearms thefts recorded by the Gardai in recent times that ~600 of these could not actually be defined as firearms. (such as gunsafes, airsoft toy guns, etc.) This very pertinent, recently revealed, information was excluded from the report.
In the interview, Deputy McGrath uses the same, incorrect and purposely misleading, figure in his ill informed, emotive rant about firearms. Mr Egan attempted to address these false figures but was not afforded the opportunity to do so as Ms. O Callaghan warned him not to 'bamboozle viewers with figures' (the correct figures in this case!) Ms. O Callaghan allowed Deputy McGrath to dominate the interview and she also used an emotive and biased line of questioning for Mr. Egan. Ms. O Callaghan did not give him sufficient time to answer her 'questions' and allowed to Deputy McGrath to interject and talk over Mr. Egan thus rendering the interview completely one sided, as was probably intended judging by the overall tone of the piece.
There was no mention in the report of how we compare to other European countries in relation to licensed firearms. Only the UK is mentioned (where handguns are still licensed for humane dispatch of animals, not banned outright as reported in the piece) There was no coverage given to the round table agreements made, in recent years, between the Minister for Justice, the Dept. of Justice and the Gardai and the sport shooting stakeholders, agreements which the Gardai have since reneged on, which is why they have been beaten in court so many times on firearms licensing issues. There was no mention made of the attempt by the relevant Dept of Justice/Garda Working Group (of which Chief Superintendent Fergus Healy, interviewed in the report, is a senior member) to hold a 'pretend' consultation process before introducing draconian reforms to firearms licensing which are out of line with other EU countries. None of these important facts were mentioned in the report. I assume many of the sportspeople interviewed by Mr. Cummins informed him of these facts but they were edited out.
If this is the best that RTE can do in covering such an important issue it makes me question the value of my licence fee.
The way in which law abiding sportspeople have been treated by the State in recent years is disgraceful. If any other minority were treated in such a way there would be uproar. It is a shame that a 'factual' news programme cannot shed at least some light on the plight of the sporting shooter and look at any real or perceived public safety concerns in a rational manner based on the facts.

https://twitter.com/Finianmcgrathtd/status/575652385143590912

FinianMcGrath wrote:

Wow! After @RTE_PrimeTime some of the gun lobby nasty. Less guns, safer society. Get it!

You'd almost think he was trolling for a response so he could go to the papers and say someone was threatening him...

If only we had a system of government where people had to produce actual solid evidence to justify their cushy positions and salaries or grants.

Instead, anyone who tries to challenge fictional numbers is told to shut up.

Less guns, safer society

<--- Prove it.

Wouldn't you love to see someone being taken to court next year for nonpayment of the TV Tax, and telling the judge "Yes Justice, I'm happy to pay for proper Public Service Broadcasting, but not for RTE because they're utterly crap.". But that choice is being taken away too.

Sparks wrote: »

https://twitter.com/Finianmcgrathtd/status/575652385143590912



You'd almost think he was trolling for a response so he could go to the papers and say someone was threatening him...

That'll be me.

Just informed him that his EX party colleagues Sen John Whelan, Jack Wall and Emmet Stagg just love him. hear they are inundated by the gun lobby.

Sparks wrote: »

Shooting Down Prime Time - Broadsheet.ie

Guy on broadsheet says over 300 complaints gone to RTE over PT gun report. Well, I learned that there are over 144,000 licensed firearms holders in Ireland. Maybe I should write in to say thanks?

Nice lighting and framing by Prime Time. You can hardly tell it's an airsoft toy until you grab a screenshot and then raise the lighting in photoshop to see it clearly.

Sparks wrote: »

Nice lighting and framing by Prime Time. You can hardly tell it's an airsoft toy until you grab a screenshot and then raise the lighting in photoshop to see it clearly.

A Dan wessson Co2 airsoft

Sparks wrote: »

I wonder if someone was hoping people might read that as Smith&Wesson?

Yeah it happens alot with airsofters .

Well technically it's part of the Cz USA family but it's still airsoft that uses fake plastic shells you load bbs into you can get a revolver type speed loader for them.

Thank god that wasnt shown lol

Think about that for a moment Strider. They don't really think that it will affect them but they say this anyway:

our focus now should be on supporting our competition target shooting colleagues, who represented themselves very well in the programme, and now need our support more than ever.

And on their page they also say:

I'm 100% with you on standing together and we need to this more than ever on target shooting.

this has nothing to do with deer stalking and everything to do with our colleagues in target shooting, who we should support them to the last.

some people want to chew my head off when I've been saying it since last year. We need to support our target shooters!!

You might think they're wrong about not being directly targeted, and it's an arguable point, but **** that ****. Read what they're saying about supporting people. They're putting their back into it on general principle! What more can anyone ask for, for pete's sakes?

I'm reading all these comments out there on the net about how people aren't rowing in together and I'm starting to think people are mistaking "being a member of the coalition" with "working to stop our sports being destroyed". The two are not the same thing and if people start thinking that not being a member of the coalition means an opposition to our sports, they need to sort their head out.

Sparks wrote: »

They're putting their back into it on general principle! What more can anyone ask for, for pete's sakes?

Well if they could stop emphasing that they're helping out 'target shooters' that would be nice. Telling their members that these proposals only affect target shooters is giving them a false sense of security and some of them will sit back and say 'Fcuk it, sure it won't have any bearing on me anyway.'

That's exactly what the Gardai have wanted all along, make it look like it's all about pistols and semi auto centrefires to divide the community but slip in the little bit about refusals based on firearms numbers/crime stats unnoticed. Then when the target shooters have been shafted they still have their Trojan horse in play for the rest. Now I'm not saying the community is divided, the WDAI have definitely stood up..but could they have done more if their members thought their firearms were in as much danger as those of target shooters? They'll definitely have lost a good few submissions because people thought it had nothing to do with them.

I've seen it myself...hunters asking me how the proposals are going, like they live on another world and it has no bearing on them then saying 'Sure they're only after your pistols'...Yeah, but your side by side will be on the scrap heap on top of my pistol if the Gardai have their way.

As I said you can see an element of 'Well we could cut ties and let you sail off down the river at any moment' creeping in a bit. They're not putting their back out for target shooters, they're putting their back out for everyone including themselves only they can't see it.

I really have no problem with how the WDAI have approached the proposals, I think their approach was better than some of the more shouty efforts which have become the signature of other organisations but they really need to acknowledge that these proposals affect everyone and that they're not just doing the target shooting community a favour by protesting against them. Their heads will be on the block should these go through.

Strider wrote: »

Well if they could stop emphasing that they're helping out 'target shooters' that would be nice.

Yeah, I can skip nice so long as necessity is being met.

could they have done more if their members thought their firearms were in as much danger as those of target shooters?

So (a) you could say precisely the same thing about the NARGC and it would make as much sense; and (b) what specifically do you think that they could have done but haven't?

they're not just doing the target shooting community a favour by protesting against them.

But they're not. They're saying all the right things and doing all the right things, even if they only think it's on general principle.

Seriously, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you have to have a good reason to assume that it wouldn't go well with hoi sin sauce and some pancakes...

dear Sir/Madam,

I wish to make a complaint about Prime Time on Tuesday March 10th. The programme was poorly researched, lacked any investigative reporting and was delivered in an absolute biased manner by the reporter and studio chair.

The programme was titled "Guns In Ireland" never reported on the fact Ireland has the strictest gun ownership laws in the EU. No mention was made of this at all and what the prerequisites are to own a firearm in Ireland. Your reporter then proceed to lap up Garda propaganda with a knowing look on his face when presented with an accessorised semi auto sporting rifle. If he was a competent reporter he should have asked CS Healey are these common rifles in Ireland ?And why exactly is it Garda custody if it was legally licensed???But that would be seemingly above investigative reporting in Ireland and Prime Time to ask a simple but awkward question perhaps??

You then callously used Mrs Campbell whose sun was murdered with an illegal firearm for her opinions on gun ownership…Do you make a habit of interviewing parents of children killed by drunken drivers or speeding for their views on Formula 1 racing??Or parents of people who drown themselves on why people participate in swimming competitions? This was an utterly deplorable and callous ploy to link ligit gun ownership to criminal misuse of firearms.

The range interview was a farce that you chopped Mr Crofton and Mr Tope down to virtual sound bytes and asked nothing of WHY this legislation is proposed? But peppered the footage with scary shots of big handguns instead.
Many scary pictures then followed of a camera panning slowly and on under light AIRSOFT replicas. These are not firearms in this country and never have been classed as such, so again you were obviously trying to imply that these were commonly available firearms in Ireland. We had your reporter then trying to shoot a shotgun[badly] and saying how much he was awed by the lightness and the kick of shooting a little red clay disc.Well DUH! That’s why we shoot clays or targets or whatever and go home and go to work and come back next weekend and do it all again,without turning into psychopathic killers ready to go off on a shooting spree as implied by Finian Mc Grath TD[more on him later.]

Deer hunting.
This had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the proposed legislation and even your reporter was at pains to point it out…So why was this included??it was as irrelevant to the proposed legislation as asking a chicken on its opinions of the results of the 1972 Olympic shot put results!

More footage of Hungerford, Dunblane and Andreas Brevick followed, with the implications that this could happen any moment in Ireland if such guns are readily available. Surprised you didn’t bother with Sandy Hook, Columbine and any other American shooting…Well surprise, we as the shooting community didn’t expect anything less of you to do so and you obliged us. Yet again more shoddy research as the UK gun crime figures are steadily rising post those two tragedies. To about 300% pre Hungerford 25 years ago.

The studio “debate”
Another Prime Time shout your opponent down fest with Miriam O Callaghan in her usual slipshod researched questions ,well in this case it sounded like she had brushed upon the American anti-gun “Handgun control INC booklet for studio presenters”. As her first statement was “if it saves just ONE life”… is a classic and by now very old debunked chestnut. But it set the tone for a complete biased talked over in favour of Mc Grath cut off no chance to finish a point ,or even make it half way by William Egan before O Callaghan interrupted or was ranted over by Mc Grath spewing lies, untruths and utter sensationalism. Crowning statement was the “You will bamboozle the public with figures.!” And then let Mc Grath quote them ad lib and utterly wrong and proven to be wrong ones at that.
Does Miss O Callaghan think the Irish public are utterly thick as not to be able to understand figures??That sort of patronising and condescending attitude has hall marked Primetime over the years and has got it into trouble enough times too along with its shoddy research, biased reporting and interviews.

However I’m not surprised as I remember well Primetimes other hatchet job on shooting sports in 2008 with a stuttering Dr Tom Clonan with” rifles that can shoot over 3 miles “and the same programme format .So much that I predicted weeks ago to my fellow Irish gun owners that Primetime would deliver another hatchet job of shoddy reporting, superficial research, and sensationalism without any in depth back ground investigation into the who ,what when why, where. Followed by two talking heads with a loaded presenter.

In fact you didn’t ask the ONE pertinent question.. WHY do the Guards want the law changed??If you had bothered to research more in depth the answer would have shocked you utterly and you would have found, the most controversial disputed legislation that surpasses the abortion law in our courts and gross mismanagement of public monies by an Garda Siochanna as well as collusion and criminal acts by Garda chief superintendents and personnel in our courts. Including perjury, tampering with official documents, gross incompetence and in some cases human rights abuses and indifference by GSOC to investigate these cases! But that would probably have bamboozled the Irish public even more.

Please don’t try to fob me off with time of production and limited amount of info that can be put into a 20 min programme slot .I have worked with TV news crews[including briefly, Primetime back in the early 00s] have featured in a documentary filmed and screened on RTE in 2010 that involved a brief amount of firearms usage. So I know well what will and won’t go into a programme and how it can be warped ,twisted and taken and put out of context. Primetime excelled yet again in all the above categories.

And you want OUR tax Euros for this in your annual legal extortion known as a TV license??