Story here. The reason for the ban? There’s been an uncomfortable increase in the number of people seeking pistol licenses:
Since 2004 there has been a dramatic increase in the number of handguns licensed in this country. The cumulative number of licensed handguns increased from zero in 2003-04 to 305 in 200405, 946 in 2005-06, 1,367 in 2006-07 and to 1,701 in 2007-08.
Deputy Deasy, who has been the guiding force in having the laws relating to handguns changed, paid tribute to senior Gardaà in Waterford for their help in bringing the Bill to the ultimate stage.
“They were under no illusions about the dangers involved in allowing this situation to go unchecked and filled me in about the loopholes in the old system.
Of course we have to keep the numbers down. If you let increase the number of people participating in the shooting sports, and keeping guns to defend their home, pretty soon there might be voters who care about preserving their rights! There might be politically powerful organizations to promote it, right here in Ireland. What’s worse, they might start taking part in this blood sport known as practical shooting.
So from now on Olympic pistol shooting sports will be the only shooting sports allowed in Ireland. And Olympic shooters will still have to jump through more hoops to be able to keep their guns. It’s a better situation than pistol shooters in the UK face, but it’s still wrong.
I wonder how many of those 1800 people have committed a crime with a handgun? My guess it’s somewhere around zero.
Fears of unlicensed guns that they can’t control lead them to crack-down on the licensed ones — the ones with names and addresses, fingerprints and fees, and layers of bureaucratic form-filling associated with their maintenance – the only ones they CAN control. Pathetic.
I guess this means that the Irish are gonna have to go back to doing what they’ve always done; acquiring and keeping guns illegally. The British never allowed them to own guns, why would their own government change that? There’s never been a legitimate reason to deny people their civil rights, and the Irish government ignores this fact at their peril.
At least it wasn’t the English disarming you, right? You did it to yourselves.
Wow!
This is brilliant. First they let people have them, and now they “severely restrict” them. In my experience that is like giving a kid candy and taking it away from him a second later. We know how that works out…….