Gun Control Ireland: How bad Can It Get?

No firearms were used in the creation of this posed potograph.  The rifle is a .308 deactivated Indian Ishapore Lee-Enfield

Gun Control: it’s here; How bad Can It Get?

At a time when the Irish shooting organisations are attacking each other with what can only be described as a death wish and the Guards/DOJ are gearing up for yet another assault on gun ownership while shooters’ attention is diverted elsewhere and the dating site "Bumble" has banned photographs of firearms; perhaps it is time to ask ourselves just how bad can it get.  When shooters seem capable of nothing more effective than anonymous online ranting, what is the worst the faceless mandarins in government offices can dream up based on the experiences of shooters in this and other countries?  This is not invention or speculation – this has already happened somewhere or has  been proposed by the antis.

The outright ban

Administrators, Authoritarian governments and the Liberal Right love simplistic solutions to complex problems.  An example is “You are poor because you are lazy so we will discourage laziness by reducing welfare payments” which has the effect of producing more, not less poverty.  A better one is:  “Your community is protesting in an unruly manner about social, political, economic and civil rights issues so we are sending in the army to shoot a few troublemakers and restore order”, - which adds state terrorism to the list of grievances.  In the context of firearms – and this argument was put forward by a Garda Commissioner who is himself under investigation – “People are able to licence handguns and handguns are being used in crime so we should ban all handguns”.  This argument is particularly insidious because it criminally ignores the fact that the handguns used in Irish crime are 100% illegal and banning legal handguns will have zero effect on crime.  The motivation behind such arguments is not a desire to reduce crime but rather to render the law-abiding civilian population gunless which is not the same thing as combating crime.  Corrupt politicians and police forces tend to fear the righteous anger of the law-abiding more than the activities of criminals and in the period after the 2008 banking crisis in Ireland the authorities were expecting and indeed preparing and arming themselves for civil unrest.  The total gun ban is the preferred option of the Guards and the DOJ and they have tried several times to introduce one.  Spin doctors dress it up as the panacea for all our national problems when the only problem it addresses is official paranoia.  As a famous left-wing politician said in a different context;  “We haven’t gone away, you know” and we will see more attempts by beleaguered authorities to bring in a diversionary blanket firearm ban.

Progressive Restrictions and slow strangulation

 

The year is 1973.  The author owned a shotgun and a .22 rifle and while there was almost unlimited opportunity to hunt there was no target shooting outside of Dublin and fullbore rifles were impossible to licence. There have been recent determined efforts by the Gardai to return to this level of restriction

In the absence of a total ban the next preferred option is slow strangulation of shooting and shooting sports.  This is very difficult to catalogue because of the sheer volume of measures involved and the ingenuity of the people whose life’s mission is to rid humanity of firearms.  I use the messianic term “Rid Humanity” deliberately because many of these admittedly gifted legislators are deluded and believe that if only guns can be eliminated then violence, murder, conflict and war will disappear from our society.  This is infantile nonsense.  The worst genocides in modern times were effected without the use of firearms.  The Irish Famine which should be called the “Irish (Trevelyan) Genocide” and the Armenian Genocide were effected by artificially and officially generated starvation, exposure and disease  The dreadful Rwandan Genocide was effected for the most part by the use of that most primitive weapons; the cheap Chinese-made agricultural machete.  In the Irish Context most mass-killers have eschewed firearms in favour of other more easily obtained weapons.  Pointing to American school-killings and telling the Irish shooting community it has to be prevented from doing likewise is a perverse and obscene lie.  Keep in mind that the security organisations had been forewarned about many mass-murderers in the US and failed to act.

The process of slow strangulation of shooting sports has already begun and is well underway.  Only last week it was announced that all dealers will have to install time locks on gunrooms.  This will involve considerable expense and is already having the intended effect of forcing small dealers to consider giving up trading because of high overheads.  Add this to the increased cost of dealers’ licensing fees and insurance and it is a certainty that many small dealers will go out of business.  No research has been done on gun crime committed with firearms stolen from dealers’ strong rooms because the dogs in the street know the supply of illegal weapons from eastern Europe to Irish Criminals is more than adequate and time locks will have negligible effect on crime.  But then the dogs in the street already know that a reduced number of RFD’s will be easier and cheaper to control. Reduced administrative costs are the other face of a gun ban.  The gun trade is as disunited as the shooting organisations and it remains to be seen whether they can get together to fight further strangulation – the time safes are a fait accompli.  Meanwhile Frau Maelstrom is beavering away at the European Commission to restrict the movement of firearms across international boundaries.  It will be interesting to see how she proposes to apply this to civilian firearms but not the highly lucrative International arms trade out of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Croatia and England.  Either way the taxpayer who likes to shoot in his spare time will find it harder and more expensive to purchase a firearm pursue his sport.

Ban through “Security”

 

The ubiquitous gunsafe now costs more than a gun. Electronic systems cost many times more.  And while no-one is arguing the necessity for security; security and security inspections have been used as a means of enforcing a gun ban by another name

Home gun cabinets are a sensible idea but some authorities have also insisted on alarm systems as well.  I personally have an alarm system and consider it money well spent.  I have also had the experience of the alarm requirement being used as a crude form of harassment intended to force me to give up a gun permit.  At one point the guards insisted I install an alarm system but provided no specifications.  I relied on the expertise of my installer and spent €3,000.  A quite obnoxious young officer came out to inspect and promptly failed the system and refused a permit for a target rifle.  When pressed he claimed the system was defective.  When further pressed he admitted the only issue was a blue flasher bulb that needed replacement. I contacted my solicitor and the Ombudsman and eventually got my permit after a year.  The incident left a sour taste in my mouth.  I was prepared to be honest, co-operative and law-abiding but the guards were under no such compunction.  From then on I knew that security was just another stick to be used to beat the shooter.

Nowhere to shoot

Then there is the movement to restrict zeroing of all firearms to shooting ranges.  On the face of it this is an admirably sensible proposal or it would be if the Republic of Ireland were as well provided with shooting ranges as Northern Ireland which it isn’t.  A shooter in Armagh, for instance is within a few miles of several superb ranges where he can zero his rifle if he wishes but a similar shooter just a few miles away in Monaghan could find himself driving a round trip of 230 miles to check the zero on his rabbit or deer hunting rifle.  The solution might be to authorise more shooting ranges but the reality is that the Irish Authorities are more interested in closing existing ranges than in opening new ones.  A proposal a few years ago that civilian shooters be allowed to use Kilpedder range was swiftly and amazingly followed by the bulldozing of Kilpedder range.  Be under no illusion – the Irish authorities are fully aware of the effect a ban on zeroing in the field would have on hunters and I confidently predict we will be hearing a lot more about this particular piece of anti-shooting ingenuity.

That Night-Shooting ban

This posed photo of fox lamping was done many years ago for a laugh but it underlines a point - lamping is hard to explain to anyone other than a sheep farmer

 

Preventing the illllegal commercial poaching of deer using lamps is the strongest argument for a total ban on lamping

Then there is the night shooting ban.  Here the shooting and hunting community scored a spectacular own goal.  While night shooting was unregulated we had open season for commercial deer poaching and thereby provided the faceless department mandarins with a copper-fastened justification for a ban.  Irresponsible fox lampers did nothing to help the situation by scaring the daylights out of people in isolated dwellings.  I haven’t a clear idea how this will end because the farmers who want night-time fox control are a powerful political lobby.  (Remember the famous interview in Tim Pat Coogan’s book “Ireland in the 20^th Century” where Brian Lenihan justified the handing over of the Irish Fishing Industry to the Spaniards on the grounds that fishermen couldn’t muster enough votes to elect a single Fianna Fáil TD in a five seat constituency?)  Shooters should re-read that paragraph.  What it says is that you have rights ONLY when you have political clout and since shooters can’t even agree which organisation should represent them they are unlikely to instil fear and trembling in fickle politicians in the next general election.  I’ll say it again lest the reader missed it – we are on the brink of getting monumentally screwed and we are sleepwalking into it.

Deer Culling to Tender

 

The commercial large-scale cull, while legal and highly efficient, signifies the end of deer hunting by individuals who kill "one for the pot"

Then there is that department of Agriculture decision to put deer culling out to tender in Wicklow.  I’m not a political insider but I’ve lived for 65 years through some of the worst and most corrupt governments ever inflicted on a young developing nation and something tells me (a) some clever lads “in the know” are going to get rich out of this and (b) the “small shooter” is about to get screwed again and (c) when this is accomplished there will be fewer deer hunters in the Wicklow mountains and those who survive will PAY.  How do I know this?  Remember Larry Goodman?  I’ll say it yet again lest the reader missed it – we are on the brink of getting monumentally screwed and we are sleepwalking into it.

Training and Certification

Certification: an excellent idea where it promotes safety but the proliferation of expensive courses and accreditations and their promotion by commercial interests means that it has the potential to become a deterrent

A young teacher of my acquaintance recently related an incident I found both appalling and worrying.  He was involved in taking groups of young people on field trips.  After some young women turned up in high-heeled shoes and thigh-length skirts and tank tops to go on a three mile hill-walk and as a consequence fell over repeatedly and suffered from cold his college decided it needed to provide instruction on “Rough Ground Walking”.  The ramifications are frightening.  A person, obviously lacking even the rudiments of common sense dresses inappropriately and gets cold and it is the fault of a teacher who presumably then merits disciplinary action.  A speeding motor cyclist falls off and sues his driving instructor.  The list of spurious litigation horror stories is endless.  Now it has come to shooting.  Fifty five years ago my father who was a master butcher handed me a knife and started my career by showing me how to skin a beef head.  labour law probably makes it illegal today.  I have shot targets, hunted and butchered my kills, large and small, for fifty years.  I even spent a while in the military not that it counts for much and I load all my own ammunition.  Today I am being told by our all-wise, all-munificent, all-knowing government I must present myself, pay for and pass a training course in firearms safety, stalking, meat handling, hygiene, ballistics and the Lord only knows what else in order to continue my shooting and hunting career because (a) I cannot be trusted to do these things properly; (b) I have learned nothing in the last fifty years and (c) If I don’t there will be consequences.  Where does it end?  Let me tell you where it will end.  It will give the authorities yet another means of screwing money out of me and If I refuse to be screwed I will quit which is what they really want.  I’m not against providing training where there is an obvious need and benefit – I spent my professional career in education – but for Christ sake don’t try to re-educate me because some civil servant/guard/politician needs to cover his arse!  If I don’t know how to kill, butcher, cook and eat a deer at this stage I’ll just retire!  Or maybe I’ll just poach – everyone else seems to be doing it!

A Conspiracy Theory about Buzzards

Buzzards and Rabbits.  Bear with me as a self-confessed conspiracy theorist.  The “Green” element in society holds fast to their self-evident dogma that healthy ecosystems should have apex predators to control populations of fast breeders like rabbits, lemmings locusts etc.  The inverse is that if you have an apex predator this proves the health of the ecosystem and the soundness of your theories.  Now the rabbit population of Ireland obviously needed controlling and traditionally, being a poor nation, the hungry peasants stepped into the breach and ate them.  When the peasants got free education and handy jobs with big money in the ESB and Bord na Móna and An Seirbhís Poiblí they stopped eating rabbits and switched to sirloin steak.  My father was a rabbit hunter AND a butcher and told me this many times and he knew.  The bunny population boomed with only a slight pause around 1954 while they developed an immunity to Myxomatosis and by 1988 farmers were going out of business because of crop damage and entire hay harvests lost to these hungry rodents.  Shooters were no help at all as they saw both rabbit hunting and rabbit eating as a badge of backwardness and spent their spare time rearing, releasing and shooting pheasants in emulation of their former colonial masters, the Anglo-Irish Gentry.  By 2010 the farmers were screaming for a solution to their rabbit problem.  The Wildlife people were meanwhile looking for ways to cut the number of hunters.  While rabbits flourished in plague numbers in farmers’ fields there was little choice but to issue gun licences to people who claimed to be rabbit shooters.  Then the eco-warriors came up with the buzzard which they claimed was a native species.  The Buzzards appear to have spread from the north but there are persistent rumours of state funded mass-releases especially in Northern Ireland.  Whatever their provenance the result has been the devastation of the rabbit population in a few years.  Already hard hit by rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease (RHD) the survivors hadn’t a chance.  Generations of buzzards have ensured the rabbit is effectively extinct through most of Ireland.  I have walked several hundred miles in the past year through counties Offaly, Westmeath, Clare, Monaghan, Armagh, Tyrone and Derry and have seen but a handful.  Exit Oryctolagus cuniculus and by extension his erstwhile main predator - the rabbit hunter.  By coincidence, around this time, the Guards and DOJ were nosing around for a solution to what they called the “Gun Culture” (or too much work doing gun licences) and the Buzzard just happened to come along at just the right time for them too.  “Why d’ya want a rifle sonny?”  “Th’ shoot rabbits, sir”.  “There’s no rabbits around here.  Yer getting’ no rifle licence.  Feck off!”  My problem with all this is that there are just too many coincidences.  But then I’m a conspiracy theorist.

Is there an environmental and wildlife crisis?

Why are wild animals and birds becoming scarce?

I’m a walker and over the last year I have walked hundreds of miles through the farmland, parkland, bogs and mountains and along the waterways of Ireland.  I have been walking for fifty years.  Let there be no mistake about this THERE IS A WILDLIFE CRISIS.  Over the last year my walks have taken me through the Sperrin Mountains in counties Tyrone and Derry, the Burren Mountains of County Clare, The Wicklow Mountains, The Bog of Allen, Westmeath pasture and along the Rivers Bann and Shannon.  On every single walk I noted the singular absence of Wildlife.  There are almost no rabbits.  Deer are scarce. Duck and pheasant are scarce. Where are the snipe one expects to see in Mountain bogs?  The only healthy population I saw were the Feral Goats on Mulloughmore in the Burren.  I saw a single flock of Golden Plover on Sawel Mountain.  Most of the Mallard I saw were on artificial ponds.  On the other hand I counted a hundred odd Red Deer on a single hillside in Caithness, Scotland.  Even crows and pigeons are scarce.  One farmer told me about local shooters who killed and left a hundred pigeons on farmland during the Snow.  I hear stories of huge quantities of game being bought from poachers and exported by unscrupulous dealers.  There should be no mistake about this – wild animals and birds are getting scarce and while the causes of this depopulation are many and beyond the scope of this article, one thing is clear;  we cannot continue to kill wild game in an irresponsible manner or there will be no game to hunt.

Legislation

Roadside no shooting sign in Newfoundland, Canada. While Canadian gun and hunting laws are enlightened and allow such activities as part of the national culture, they are strict. Translate them to ireland and the emphasis will be on the "Don't" rather than the "Do"

Another area of concern is the trend towards restricting the usage of firearms after a permit has issued.  It is quite usual for licensing authorities to allow the use of a particular firearm for target shooting or hunting but not both.  I fail to see what is achieved by issuing a rifle permit to a shooter for range use and then prosecuting him for shooting a rabbit or vice-versa.  In fact I have no doubt it is restriction for restriction’s sake and as a device to further bureaucratise the business of firearms licensing and deter people from going to the bother of getting a gun licence. 

Micro-stamping of firing pins seems to be an option under consideration by some authorities.  This, in theory links a spent case to a particular firearm.  The theory is sound but one worries about the application.  Ballistic testing of firearms has also been introduced and again the concern is that the test be competently done.  This scares the bejaysus out of me as it literally means I am a suspect in every gun crime committed in the jurisdiction.  I can only hope they don’t get it wrong but my confidence in the system is very shaky.  I re-read recently the botched forensic evidence that convicted the Birmingham Six and it scared the living daylights out of me too.  Another nice restriction is the tagging of deer after a kill and the online logging of the location using GPS.  There are even concerns that the legislation prohibiting the home slaughtering of meat animals might be used to force hunters to take deer carcases to factories for processing; - more nonsense, expense and harassment.  Shooting ranges are installing cameras and rumour has it they have built-in live microphones.  No-one has had range footage used against him in support of an accusation but it is coming.  If it comes to that I am intending to fit cameras on my car – just in case.  And while we are on the subject of dashcams, do you suppose the potential drone cameras offer for spying on hunters and shooters has occurred to officialdom?

Then there’s the “Sting”.  I was completely flabbergasted when a former law officer told me of a sting operation carried out against a gunowner in England.  The authorities decided to visit a particular household to inspect security as is their privilege in law.  On this occasion the gunowner was out and the officer asked his wife to open the gun cabinet which she did.  He promptly confiscated the contents and revoked the husband’s permit on the grounds an unauthorised person had access to his firearms.  This former officer went on to advise me that in the event of a “visitation” I should under no circumstances permit access to any part of the house other than the gun room as there were cases of this leading to accusations as when an officer found a “suspicious” baseball bat.  The officer asked what it was for and was told it was for playing baseball upon which he asked to be shown the ball.  When no ball was forthcoming he made accusations of possession of a “weapon” with intent to endanger.  Obviously when law enforcement reaches this nadir of unscrupulousness and deviousness no-one is safe and any innocuous object can be used to support accusations of criminal intent.  My informant even advised me to ask to see a search warrant if pressurised.  It’s hard to trust the person in the uniform if even his colleagues don’t trust him.

Criminalising Ill-Health and Age

Society doesn't give a toss about the elderly and the plight of the unwell is hardly a government priority either.  Recent application of firearms laws ensures they won't have access to firearms

One device used by policing authorities to withdraw firearms licences is the spurious and hostile manipulation of an applicant’s medical history against him or her.  I have personal and detailed experience of friends who had their permits withdrawn in this way.  One lady made the mistake of revealing she had taken a single course of antidepressants at the time of her mother’s death.  Her firearms permit was promptly withdrawn on the outrageous grounds she was a danger to society and a few weeks later her husband’s permit was revoked on the grounds his wife was unstable, dangerous and likely to access his gun to commit a crime.  The situation has not been satisfactorily resolved despite years of petitioning.  What it comes down to is this: the authorities are happy to label an innocent person a dangerous criminal PERMANENTLY AND WITH NO APPEAL on the basis of the commonest ailment in our society – temporary depression as a result of bereavement.  This contradicts everything medical science knows about depression and I have no hesitation in calling this a criminal violation of civil rights.  Incidentally depression rates in police forces worldwide are higher than the norm yet these are exactly the people who carry “official” guns and criminalise civilians.  I have personal knowledge also of a man of advanced years who had his licence revoked and shotgun confiscated on the grounds he was forgetful and likely to forget to secure his gun.  Now it seems it is not even necessary to do something wrong – if a law officer says he thinks you MIGHT forget to lock away your shotgun then you are a criminal deserving of punishment. 

The most outrageously and insensitive example of the criminalisation of ill-health occurred in the aftermath of a suicide by a shooter of my acquaintance.  The man had been suffering from both physical and mental health problems.  After his unfortunate death a club official remarked to me “If I’d known he was taking those antidepressants I’d have made sure his guns were taken off him”.  Now it was out in the open.  The callous absence of any sympathy or concern for a suffering fellow human defies description.  I’m not a lawyer but if you criminalise ill-health and old age isn’t there something rotten in the system? 

I have heard horror stories in several countries about questionable treatment of people who have been interrogated while transporting firearms.  I have a lockable cabinet in my pickup for my guns which is pretty much the end of the matter for me but I know of cases where vague gun laws were misapplied against innocent shooters.  Apparently an English shooter lost his permit on grounds of violation of the conditions on his firearms certificate because he was stopped on the way to a shooting range but had detoured to a convenience shop.  Apparently this was treated as a crime.  I have often wondered if I take two guns out of the cabinet and spend the morning rabbit shooting and the afternoon target shooting can some over-zealous representative of the law make a case against me?  I know of a hunter who was prosecuted for carrying a gralloching knife on his belt while driving.  Another claimed he was stopped with a shotgun on the back seat and when he produced a permit the officer charged the passenger with illegal possession of a firearm.  The incident may be apocryphal but is none the less cautionary for that.  It has become plain to me that an individual officer’s interpretation of the law is subject to personal prejudices and in some cases at least, there is a disturbing willingness to use “creative” interpretation of law to effect a successful prosecution.  Is it the same in other areas of legislation and law enforcement.  I have come across instances of corruption, incompetence and plain arrogance in situations unrelated to firearms.  It is a well-documented fact there is a grave problem in policing in the Republic of Ireland and I have neither the space nor the knowledge to make recommendations – that is the task of the various commissions of investigation.  What I do know is that when policing in Northern Ireland was shown to be inadequate and corrupt the result was a root and branch reform called the Patton Reforms and that this was for the most part very successful.  The approach south of the border has been haphazard and there has been a lot of self-investigation by the Guards and the DOJ which, quite honestly, will convince no-one.  The very serious policing problems in the Republic of Ireland require reform not a “fix”.

Lest I be accused again of being “Anti Guard” as I was when I first wrote on this subject twenty years ago let me clarify my position.  I am Anti lies corruption , incompetence and arrogance.  If a police force is untruthful corrupt, incompetent or arrogant then it will find me “anti”.  I am a law abiding citizen.  I have letters of tax compliance and zero convictions.  I have been outrageously treated by the law as when my residence was broken into and a fire started.  I reported the crime to a particular jurisdiction day office and was told to go to a nearby big town station and when I went there I was told to go to a second town where I was told to go to back to the office where I had first reported the crime.  The break-in and attempted arson went unreported and un-investigated and never appeared in anyone’s crime statistics.  I got the old run-around.  I looked a certain policeman in the eye many years ago while he told me; “You MUST be in the IRA – you’re mad about guns”.  I’m not a policeman but I know that is not how you conduct an investigation.   If I had behaved with a similar lack of professionalism in my career I would have been fired.

Anti-Gun Europe 

The EU has decreed American reloading powders are "TOXIC" and we have to be protected from them. As one wag pointed out; "The only people ever to be killed by Varget were shot".  Needless to say the military will continue to use these products unhindered

Ireland, England and Germany have the most restrictive gun laws in the world.  This is a trend likely to continue.  The most recent "squeeze" to emerge from the EU on shooting is the ban on Hodgdon's and other American reloading powders.  Chemicals not conforming to REACH will be banned from import into the UK and EU next year.Apparently the EU has identified a component which it has labelled as toxic. 

How bad?

The endgame?  Emotionally charged campaigning by US children demanding gun control?

So to answer my own question as to how bad gun control can get; the answer is “as bad as it can”.  There are no rules or standards of fair play for shooting sports.  Justice is connected to the size and effectiveness of your political clout.  Islamist Jihadists use guns, knives, bombs and cars to kill people.  How much action are we likely to see restricting their access to, for instance, cars.  None; because car owners vote and there are millions of them.  If car-owners are subjected to too much scrutiny and inconvenient checks there will be political outcry and anyway no-one wants to ban cars apart from a few hard-core environmentalists.  I have heard horror stories about some electricians being banned from carrying penknives for stripping cable.  No one cares when restrictions are placed on the sale and transportation of explosives.  Guns are different.  The ordinary Joe and Mary Citizen in the street get their education on most things including guns from the Murdoch-controlled flickering shadows on their TV screen.  They have been frightened by what Rupert Murdoch chooses to reveal to them.  He doesn’t tell them about the crimes committed by their own governments but he will happily report gun crime and the utterances of a demented despot in North Korea.  Mary Citizen, in particular is terrified for her children and sees the world through her feminist tinted lenses.  She is not interested in a male-dominated sport like shooting and fear is irrational.  The once mighty American National Rifle Association is on the defensive as is their erstwhile champion; that other demented despot in the White House.  Careers are being made, votes garnered and narcissic celebrities catapulted into the public consciousness on the issue of gun control.  Ireland is a small country still suffering from the “we’re poor but proud” mentality and a compulsion to lead Europe in political correctness.  Ireland will embrace gun control with a bit of help and a few lies from our leading citizens.  The reality is that even if the shooting community abandoned its parochialism and united to challenge this mythology it would have a monumental fight on its hands.  Divided we haven’t a chance and we are allowing some very unscrupulous legislators and administrators to manipulate us.  Right here and now it really looks like we have been divided and conquered.  Again.  I hope I’m wrong.  (Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. Psalm 146:3-5)

Non-Gun Control

 

 A dangerous potential criminal with a non-gun that "should be banned"

 

Finally there are the restrictions, proposed bans and bans on non-guns.  By Non-Guns I mean deactivated guns, Airsoft and paintball guns, replicas and toys.  A policeman has told me there is a strong body of opinion in his profession that realistic copies should be banned because it is too diffficult to distinguish between a teenager with an airsoft Glock and the real thing.  Think about this.  These things are toys and can never be used to kill anyone but are nevertheless considered ban-worthy.  I once tried, for an experiment, to purchase an airsoft Luger online as a wall-hanger and when asked for evidence of membership of a relevant club I produced a firearm pistol permit, a Practical Pistol green card, and a membership card of an authorised rifle and pistol club.  The sale was refused.  The incident is revealing in that it shows the gun control "final solution".  I can buy a car, an axe, a baseball bat, toxic chemicals or a large knife, all of which are lethal but not a gun-toy.

Life after Gun Control

After Gun Control?  Hillwalking. it's not so bad but it's not shooting

In 1973 I had a 22 rifle and a shotgun.  Forty years later I was involved in most of the hunting and target shooting activities available in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and had the firearms I needed.  By then the Irish authorities in time-honoured fashion had gone into backlash mode and started to cast around for excuses to block people from getting into the various shooting disciplines,  They had a particular issue with Practical (bad) Pistol shooting and .30 (bad) calibre rifles.  Today the situation has worsened and there is a ban on centrefire pistols although a lot of ingenuity has gone into calling it something else.  Periodically the Irish authorities attempt to roll back firearms legislation to 1980 and it is expected these efforts will continue and they may even succeed due to the fractious and fragmented state of the various shooting organisations.  In the wider world of the UK, Europe and the USA events are playing out that look ominous for sport shooting.  Most people, myself included, accept the inevitability of creeping gun control up to and perhaps including blanket bans.  On the hunting front the numbers of quarry species have declined to the point where rabbit shooting is about finished and deer are greatly reduced.  Life has changed  Personally I do far more target shooting now and less hunting than I did twenty or even ten years ago.  So is there life after gun and hunting control?

I love target shooting and miss the rabbit hunting but I quickly realised I missed most of all being out on the mountain or through the fields and meeting people who live in quiet places.  It was a situation easily remedied because I have always walked and more so now than ever.  I enjoy walking without a gun.  I have an interest in amateur photography so I carry my digital SLR camera.  In a sense I still do all the things I love but not at the same time and in different time proportions.  Hill walking, photography and target shooting take up most of my spare time followed by reloading, reading, writing, hunting and fishing.  I wish the hunting, especially the rabbit hunting were better but I have reached the point where I don’t hunt rabbits because I genuinely fear for their viability as a quarry species.  There are two across the lane from me but nothing would justify shooting them.  I haven’t seen them for a while and the Buzzards are back.  Maybe they’re eaten.  I go to the range often where I particularly enjoy long range targets and black powder shooting.  When I feel the need to walk which is about six times a week, I put on the boots and hike through the bogs and parkland near the house or I go up into the Sperrin Mountains for more serious trips around the many peaks.  I climbed Sawel and Dart recently; a five hour march.  It was nothing if not invigorating and free of the limitations placed on one by hunting.  There was no rifle to carry and no need to keep quiet and no need to wear wellies; boots and gaiters being sufficient on the frozen ground.  Afterwards we met the landowner who farms sheep on1,000 acres of mountain and had a great old chat.  It was a perfect day.  It just wasn’t shooting.  The next day I went to the range and had another great day but it wasn’t hunting.  This is what the authorities want – to compartmentalise activities to make them more controllable.  They can’t ban walking but they can close shooting ranges or declare natural heritage areas and ban hunting.  The really disturbing thing is that some restrictions on shooting actually make sense such as the protection .of endangered species while the overall effect is to demonise ALL shooting

So there it is; creeping gun control on every front with the possibility of convulsive total bans as the death toll mounts in American school killings.  There is an undeniably gender-bias in with the most vociferous proponents being female.  Everyone agrees guns are to blame and no-one wants to admit the possibility first proposed forty years ago by Desmond Morris in “The Human Zoo” – that society is dysfunctional, even sick. The future for shooting sports is bleak.

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Comment/reply from Simon Jester (too long to post in comments) 

 Got to disagree with you on a few points Cal. As someone who hunts and shoots regularly in Germany.It is a liberal paradise compared to Irl and the UK...You do the time and the tests, but then you have it for life, unless you DUI , join the Neo-Nazis or Reich burgers or diddle your taxes. Buy air guns, Xbows, pepper spray, stun guns over the counter, and single shot BP weapons are bought freely.No biggie either to do a BP and reloading test, an afternoons work. How much of that can you do in IRL? We still have CF handguns,22 handguns and big cal semi-auto in the ROI in comparison to th UK.Did we have those 72 to 06 here?We finally got off our holes and demanded them back and reluctantly got them back.Yes, we lost IPSC[more thru IPSC reps own stupidity than thru AGS, and you will know I was advocating all thru the 1980s setting up practical shotgun in Ireland.I wrote a good few articles for ISD on the topic , and no one was interested.It would have been a fallback position for Irish IPSC, had the pistols gone pear-shaped, which it did..Too far too fast. But even then this CF handgun ban has been loosened a bit and it is not a permanent feature,it can be reversed by ministerial order.

You forgot to mention that AGS lost 95% of all handgun and semi-auto refusals in the Irish courts, and now they have to pay court costs, should they fail.I was one of the first cases that were awarded costs in Limerick DC in Oct 2014 for a refusal of a 9mm and semi .308. In Nov that year, the AGS tried for an all-out ban, of things they didn't like and opened for themselves a Pandora's box of problems with gun issues in Ireland.So much so it became a Dail public enquiry in Feb 2015,in which the Irish shooters acquitted themselves admirably.So much so that the garda authority is still looking at this carry-on, and any Supers or chief supers who are acting the maggot about granting firearms licenses.In fact, this blew up so badly in their faces their chief ballistics expert, known as "inspector Google" was basically dismissed from the force as being utterly incompetent and a perjurer, and let's not mention a few chief supers caught in the high court perjuring themselves too and faking official firearms documentation. And let's not forget the thousands of Irish shooters who lobbied their TDs and ministers and told them in no uncertain terms in an election year, what could happen to FG/Lab if this became pear shape. We now have the Firearms Consultative Panel where we have a direct line into the Dept of Justice,to discuss any problems, that's when egos and prima donnas don't throw their teddies from the pram and delay everyone .Or collations of vested interests don't try it on with banning night shooting, semi-auto rifles, except those pre 1950,cos their buddies in the gun trade are sitting on a pile of M1carbines and Garands.
Or when a bunch of old boys in the Coilte woods decide to make a few bob off the majority of Irish stalkers by mission creep from their original private deal with Coilte. They have been told to where to get off.
So let me see am I worse off than I was when I started shooting at ten years of age as a garsoon in Ireland in 1976?Hmm.I have a 9mm a Semi-auto .308, two restricted 8 and 9 shot shotguns, a .22 handgun.Am a member and spokesman for the most effective EU pro-gun lobby group in the EU parliament Firearms United Ireland.A branch of Firearms United with over 14 million EU gun owners behind it, who were lobbying a month before FACE realised a semi-auto ban would affect their members. I have a fighting fund that can now be deployed to any court in an EU country to challenge any EU legislation, and the legislation is being challenged by Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic,and FU IRL might get onto the FCP in Dublin too? Compared to the1970s to 90s??? I think the Irish gun owner has woken up to the fact that if you fight you can win and that we can punch well above our weight class,with the right incentive and leadership. Thats the biggest problem facing Irish shooting,inter group rivilary and squabbling,as well as the most Byzanthine and Machivellian internal political mind fuk games. If we could get over this nonsense of dick measuring in Irish shooting sports and politics we would be a force to be reckoned with.