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| Eighteen, off the leash and loose in the USA and the UK in 1972-73, the author came up against Irish racial stereotypes for the first time and realised that he belonged to a nation widely perceived as violent despite having a low crime rate |
In 1972 as an 18-year student on a J1 visitor visa in Miami, Florida I was bashing a cash register for E. K. Kresge and company (now called K-Mart perhaps to conceal the founder's ethnicity) on Biscayne Boulevard. Miami is a very Jewish community with a huge Cuban presence. Fidel Castro had recently emptied his jails and asylums and deported the insane and the criminal by boat to Miami - a move of pure brilliance as it simultaneously relieved him of the expense of their upkeep and dumped them on his American enemies. The crime rate in Miami shot up overnight. My introduction to Miami included a young Cuban friend showing me the bullet-riddled car belonging to his father whom a rival drug gang had killed. It was a shock for a kid from Rhode in County Offaly where apart from a few rows at football matches, there hadn't been a violent incident since the old IRA botched an ambush on a Black and Tan Crossley Tender in Croghan - the tans came from the opposite direction to that anticipated and things got lumpy for a while but everyone escaped to tell and retell the tale ad-infinitem until well into the 1970's. So in 1972 Miami was a quite violent place when up comes a little Jewish lady to my cash register with her purchases:
"Oh Honey, you have such a LOVELY accent! Where do you come from?"
"Ireland Ma'am".
"Oh Honey! I'm so sorry; it must be AWFUL to be a refugee".
"Actually ma'am the fighting is all in Northern Ireland".
(blank incomprehension from the nice lady).
The memory of Germany's genocide of the Jewish people was only 25 years old in 1972 and the lady was probably a survivor and she felt keenly for all refugees. The interesting thing was that in a crime-ridden US city in the middle of the Viet-Nam war where the US was itself committing genocide, this compassionate woman saw Ireland as a violent place. Such is the power of the media to distort facts. And it wasn't just Miami. How many times had I heard of firearms applications turned down with; "what d'you want a gun for when people are killing each other in Northern Ireland?" The following summer of 1973, took me to a building site in London where I experienced the full virulence of English working class anti-Irish bigotry. Even as late as 1995 in Saudi Arabia when an English colleague became aware of my interest in firearms he informed our superior he thought I was a terrorist. Our superior, being himself a refugee from Palestine, treated the report with the disdain it deserved. Perceptions are paramount.
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| Ireland has a violent image |
My point is that we, the Irish, have a reputation as a violent race and as a nation with a rapidly emerging and politically correct middle class. We are acutely aware of it and in attempting to prove we aren't have taken some extreme steps such as labelling sport shooters as criminals and terrorists. That the reputation is undeserved matters little as perceptions are paramount. But is the reputation undeserved? The facts are disturbing.
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| The gun control lobby have an unassailable point |
Let's remove some vagueness and obfuscation. Gun Control as the solution to gun crime in the US means just that. Control. Go 3,000 miles east to the first landfall which is our benighted little country and "Control means "Ban". "Gun" has a slightly different meaning too when used in conjunction with"control". To an American the term refers mainly to assault rifles. For the Irish DOJ there is no such ambiguity. Gun Control applies to All firearms. This is no guesswork on my part. At the time of their last attempted ban our DOJ made this clear. To people like myself who have lived through several rounds of gun confiscation over a fifty year period there is no ambiguity whatsoever. Irish authorities suffer from no doubt in this regard; gun ownership is linked to gun crime. The evidence says otherwise but again perceptions are paramount.
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| The Irish crime rate is rising. Gun ownership is not the cause but gun control is the effect. Perceptions see to that |
The facts are, as I said, disturbing. If we are to believe the Irish Times and I don't quite, the Republic of Ireland was a more dangerous place than Northern Ireland in the period 2014-2018 where you were more likely to be a victim of gun crime. I know Northern Ireland well and the crime rate is quite low especially in rural areas. Belfast still has its moments. The facts as presented by the media are contradictory and confusing but there is ample evidence that Dublin in particular is experiencing a rise in crime. And not just Dublin - my old home in Rhode, County Offaly, so peaceful back in 1972, has experienced the scourge of drug related crime too.
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| Many years ago I published this photo of a friend giving pistol instruction to his sons. I got into endless trouble over it - not because of the 9mm Glock but because two of the subjects were wearing T-shirts which, as I was later informed, were in the Celtic soccer club colours and as such raised a storm of tribal anger. As someone with zero interest in or knowledge of soccer I was totally unaware of the effect the photo would have and it shows the power of perceptions |
So we have a violent reputation and the media reported facts show our crime rate is rising and our police, civil service, politicians and government are happy to buy into this view of ourselves and part of their response is an attack on gun ownership. But surely they can distinguish between legal and illegal guns where the former are rarely or never used in gun crime and the latter are the source and reason for it? Apparently not. Why is this so? Is it because the Irish people have shown their willingness to resist injustice, corruption and bad government by force of arms many times in the last 800 years and the official mind, for this reason, mistrusts the law abiding citizenry and legal gun ownership more than it mistrusts criminals? Perhaps it is the Irish intolerance of injustice that worries the official mind. Why else would the authorities have invested in quantities of arms and ammunition at the time of the 2008 crash? A criminal is easily dealt with. If he is caught with an illegal gun he goes to gaol. A citizen with a legal firearm is more complicated. That the citizen just wants to shoot rabbits and hasn't a political thought in his head is irrelevant. Perceptions are paramount.
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| A long number of years ago a sheep farmer asked me to sort out a lamb killing problem and I shot a very large dogfox for him which solved the problem. The man was grateful and complimented me on my marksmanship. His choice of words betrayed an unintended bias "You're as good as Rambo". The connection between shooting a lamb-killing dogfox in Kildare and the Hollywood knife-wielding homicidal Vietnam veteran is nonexistent but that is how the man was conditioned to think. Perceptions again. |
So is gun control based on mistrust? It would appear so. The authorities mistrust the citizenry as being prone to armed rebellion and the citizenry mistrust authority for its propensity for lying and the mis-labelling of the citizenry as prone to criminality.
Are our authorities wrongheaded to mistrust the citizen? I believe so. A degree of mistrust of our fellow man is wise but to regard each and every gun owner as a potential criminal is insane. The Irish people's willingness to resort to revolution has been diluted by affluence, EEC membership and secularisation. We have been seduced by the Euro, political correctness, peace and prosperity. There are few today who would go out, rifle in hand like James Connolly, to a certain death. Yet a guard told me as recently as twenty years ago: "you must be in the IRA - you're mad about guns". Old fears and prejudices die hard.
Even assuming the majority of our leaders, civil servants and police are enlightened and that the official dread of firearms is motivated by desire to fight crime and promote justice, they still seem to have missed a salient point. You can demand justice as much as you want. You have a moral and legal right to do so but what you get is not justice but legislation and the two are not the same. Law is Justice on the cheap. Simplistic solutions to complex problems - something all administrators love. The problem is that in resolving one injustice you often create another. Don't bother telling the citizen, as the US government told told Native Americans in the nineteenth century: "give up your guns. The government will look after you" because that is asking for an act of trust and you have long ago squandered trust.
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We've all seen this picture. An old photo of the last few FREE LIVING native Americans with a crudely superimposed caption but it sums up the mistrust that has accumulated over generations between the government and the governed. The message: don't trust government |
Is the gunowner/citizen wrongheaded to withhold trust and respect for the Law, the lawgiver and the law enforcer? Probably to some extent. We should certainly respect justice unconditionally as an abstract ideal. Lawgivers and enforcers are human with all that implies. Some deserve respect. Should we fear them? No but we do because fear works. Trust. Those of us who lived through the betrayals of the Temporary Firearm Custodial Order of 1972 and the banking crisis of 2008 will never trust a politician or civil servant again. Respect. Respect for the law should be absolute while respect for the lawgiver and enforcer must be conditional on their integrity. Do authorities worldwide share their low opinion of citizens? No because I have family members in the NYPD and their civic attitudes are totally different. As one explained to me: "Gun control means good folks can't have guns". Gun Control and gun bans are justice on the very cheap.
Now let us ask the important question. In the face of inevitable gun control/bans being made law by democratically elected but deluded representatives prompted by unelected and biased servants of the state and enforced by a police force with questionable motives- are we helpless? The answer is yes because otherwise we are opposing the rule of law and they know that and are are banking on us being afraid and/or unwilling to oppose the rule of law. Sometimes the law is an ass but that is a topic that must wait. We can write letters to our politicians but of course they will be ignored as usual. We can take recourse to law and be ignored again - it's happened many times already. They get the benefits of democracy and we get the shaft. None of this is speculation - it is the situation that has pertained for years. There is no legal way out of this cat's pyjamas.
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| Are we justified in regarding the law as an ass? A judge will tell you such attitudes are disrespectful nonsense. A member of a discriminated against minority will have a different view |
Let me ask another pertinent question. How does the average citizen view the refusal of our government to reform the Law, the banking system, the Department of Justice, the police and civil service when they are so obviously rotten? We have had years of scandals and ineffective enquiries and botched self regulation. Is it incompetence? Or is it something more sinister. I have asked many people for an opinion and the answers have surprised even myself. A surprising number of people believe politicians are afraid to initiate reform. Most have pointed to J. Edgar Hoover and the files he kept on politicians as an example of a public servant blackmailing government into doing what is best, not for the country or its citizens, but for its civil service. Are they all wrongheaded conspiracy theorists? Personally I don't know. What I do know is that it doesn't much matter in terms of the loss of trust in the people we trusted to run our affairs. Northern Ireland suffered the pain of the Patton Reforms and survived to become a better society for it. For whatever the reason the Republic of Ireland is to have no Patton style reforms and is a worse society for it. We have been short changed. So maybe there is or there isn't a master puppeteer manipulating our government. The fact that people even suspect it indicates "corrosive" cynicism and loss of faith. Perceptions cut both ways.
So we are helpless. Is that an end to it? No. There have been examples in the last few years of alienated and powerless majorities reasserting themselves. Donald Trump, Brexit and the rise of Neo-Fascism are all indicative of ignored sections in society espousing extreme and vague ideologies and demanding a say in the way a country is run. These alienated populations are sometimes deluded and don't usually get quite the changes they had hoped for by which time a new administration with a whole new set of character defects has assumed power. It hasn't happened in Ireland yet. We are too recently emerged from colonialism, poverty, recession and the moral tyranny of the church. Could the widespread perception of corruption, arrogance and incompetence in public life and the public service lead to extreme ideologies? Racism is on the rise which is merely a device for blaming foreigners for the shortcomings of the governments WE elect. We don't have a fully fledged fascist party - yet. But we had one in the past. Could Eoin o'Duffy's ghost rise again?
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| The political correctness-obsessed Ireland of 2018 prefers not to recall it had a Fascist party in the thirties. Our civil servants, police and army suffer from no such political amnesia and fear the return of extreme ideologies and gun bans are their solution |
Not many people know this but at the worst point of the previous crash in 1984 when the country was bankrupt, shadowy individuals approached local politicians sounding out support for a takeover by a group of concerned policemen, soldiers, politicians, businessmen and civil servants. My informant, a female member of a local government who has since died, recognised treason and demurred as did others and the proposed coup was stillborn. As she said at the time: "I wonder what they planned to do with the objectors - the prisons are already full". It was an insane idea but it had adherents. I mention this by way of suggesting the Irish commitment to democracy was not universal. By the same token we are not immune to the rise of right wing ideologies. This is all a long way from some enthusiast in Tipperary looking for a .223 rifle for foxes or a .22 pistol for targets but it places things in perspective. Injustice, corruption, arrogance ad incompetence sometimes have unexpected and serious consequences and no incident exists in isolation.
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| I had to look a second time at this subject. A female member of the National Guard with her John Deere ferrying shooters and their kit to the firing line at Camp Perry, Ohio for that iconic US event, the National Championships. Can you comprehend the vastness of the impossibility of the like ever happening on the Curragh ranges? It really reminds us of the odium with which shooting is regarded by Irish authorities. |
The wheels of history grind slowly and everything changes. Generally war changes our perception of threat more than anything else and there are many who believe the world is closer to war today than ever before. The Doomsday clock sits at 2 minutes to Midnight which represents global Armageddon.The necessity for arming the populace in times of war generally overcomes governments' fears concerning its own citizens. When the external threat becomes prescient the notion of giving guns to citizens with which to protect the government increases in attractiveness. All things are relative and since gun control cannot succeed in abolishing war we will see a return to war at some point in the future. Some people believe this prospect is closer than we think; that Europe is almost back where it was in June 1914 in Sarajevo when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip and the First World War was triggered. The proliferation in the Balkans of small states inimical to each other seems to confirm this view. Should the EU disintegrate post Brexit, war will surely come in time. My grandfather's and my father's generation lived through two world wars. I have lived in a war zone in the Middle East but not at home - although Northern Ireland is very close. long may European peace continue but things do change. We were fortunate the Balkans crisis of the 1980's did not destabilise Europe.
So for the moment at least; living as we do in a time of relative peace, social conformity, increased surveillance and affluence, it is unlikely gun control/bans will lead to anything more than some posturing by a few shooting organisations. Affluence is important - it keeps people relatively happy and placid as they dissipate their energies in hedonistic pursuits. We also live in a time of weak government - that could change too and any landslide victory by any party is likely to have a law and order dimension and when that happens the shooter will be cast in the role of an enemy of society. It has happened before.
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| I took this photo at Camp Perry National Championships in the USA in 2009. It shows an Australian competitor's buggy complete with AR15 rifle abandoned outside one of the gunshops while the owner did a bit of retail therapy. No-one even noticed it much less considered stealing it or arresting the owner for negligence. What does it tell us? |
In a previous article "Gun Control Ireland; How Bad Can It Get?" I looked at the various scenarios we are likely to face. I am now posing the question; "is there anything we can do to ameliorate the effects of Gun Control/Bans?" The English experience after Hungerford and Dunblane gives us some insight. Handguns were confiscated en-masse but not all handguns. Air pistols, long barrelled pistols and black powder pistols were not banned and there seems to be a slight movement towards allowing handguns again. Apparently some shooters have been able to licence stocked long-barrelled handguns. This is cold comfort for Ireland since the authorities successfully confiscated air pistols along with everything else in 1972 and since reloading is effectively banned, black powder shooting is thereby impossible. In my previous articles I dealt with the closure and refusal of planning approval for shooting ranges and increased restrictions on the firearms trade. The prospects are not good. It might be a good for shooting enthusiasts to begin with air pistols and gradually work up to a position where a greater variety of handguns might be permitted. Perhaps a court case could be launched to allow black powder. But before any initiative has a chance of success it would be necessary to construct more shooting ranges. It is asking a lot of the Irish shooting community which excels more in infighting than in cooperative initiatives. And if all this weren't enough there are the matters of Brexit and a possible United Ireland which would undoubtedly impact on shooting sports. As one shooting friend is fond of saying; "it's time to get fond of my 22".
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| Is the "Rambo" label always unjustified? The fact is the authorities and the media will always find an enthusiast who justifies their stereotypes of shooters |
I remember a time when a farmer couldn't licence a 22 Hornet for foxes and before that I was told when I applied for my first 22 over forty nine years ago: "what do you want a rifle for? Haven't you a shotgun?" Our government might decide to let us keep our 22's but to assume we are secure in our ownership of small bore firearms is a mistake. ALL firearms will be held at the pleasure (or whim) of the guardians Of the peace.
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| Ballykinler (British) Military Ranges. I wanted a photo of myself with a 25-pounder which I had trained on with the FCA forty years previously so the C.O. told me to go ahead. When I visited Cathal Brugha Barracks in 2002 to visit my pistol, confiscated in 1972, I tried to take a photo outside the main gate. I was followed down the street by two military policemen and detained for questioning. And we give out about the British? |
How many people have been shot by the Gardai in the last twenty years? I have been trying for some time to get an answer to this question and there seems to be no official figure anywhere online. On the other hand there are numerous sources that list the 88 members of the force who have been killed in the line of duty since the foundation of the state. Apart from this precise figure the crime statistics for Ireland appear to be in disarray due to sloppy reporting and skewed analysis of crime over the last ninety years. Various newspaper reports claim the Republic of Ireland has a higher crime rate than the United Kingdom. No-one disputes this assertion and it is most likely correct. The dearth of data on police killings in the Republic of Ireland is worrying. The PSNI are understandably cautious about using their guns because in the supercharged tribalism that pertains in Northern Ireland all shootings are regarded as sectarian until proven otherwise. The Republic of Ireland is less sensitive in this regard and there is still a tendency to give the police the benefit of the doubt. In the light of the Abbeylara and other incidents this may not be a good idea.
There is also a perceptible tendency among feminists to portray gun ownership as part of the abuse of women issue. In her otherwise excellent article of 23 August 2012 on http://www.thedetail.tv/articles/who-owns-northern-Ireland-s-153-000-legally-held-guns Kathryn Torney is at pains to show that the majority of firearms are owned by older men. She uses visually striking graphics based on statistics provided by the PSNI showing gun ownership by gender and age.
The message is clear. Guns are mostly owned by older men. The statistics are accurate but the effect is to make older men look dangerous and criminal. This is inaccurate and is not borne out by the crime statistics. The illustration furthermore shows a handgun and an assault rifle which is an inaccurate reflection of the types of firearm commonly licensed in Northern Ireland (shotguns are the commonest type of firearm). Was the author aware of the skewed impression she created? I don't know but again perceptions are paramount.
If the reader has gotten this far he will realise I am (1) a conspiracy theorist; (2) a cock-up theorist and (3) a pessimist and (4) a realist. Bad news travels well and most of the perceptions of guns, shooters and shooting are negative. Many in the shooting organisations agree with this assessment and try as best their can to counter bad publicity by supporting worthy charities and so on. I admire and support these people. On the other hand there are many in shooting sports whose record is less praiseworthy and who have undone much good work. Perhaps the most blameworthy are those who through their greed, arrogance and megalomania have demoralised, alienated and made cynical many otherwise positively minded shooters. It's a story that makes sad telling. How many times have I gone target shooting or hunting and encountered fellow shooters whose behaviour has caused me to wonder why I bother with such people? But then I return from a particularly fulfilling day in the field or on the range and marvel at the unselfish gentlemanliness of many. Time will tell which group predominates.
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| One can be overly pessimistic. This is my old apartment (circled) in Saudi Arabia twenty five years ago; a grim high rise building on the edge of the desert with a strict dress code and an absolute ban on all firearms where I was once berated by the Motaween (religious police) for whistling an Irish tune on my way to work. Life is better today. |
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