Women, Feminism and Guns

Women, Feminism and Guns

Irish International shooter, Fabian Connolly meets a feminist shooter with a sense of humour at Camp Perry, Ohio.  "I miss my husband but  my aim is improving"

The public debate on gun control must necessarily be an American phenomenon (In Ireland we've had anti-firearms legislation in the Republic of Ireland since 1926) and as such it has been marked by competing catchphrases, convoluted logic and incomprehensible if eye-catching iconography. American Feminists like Dianne Feinstein have touted gunowners' rights and gun violence against women as two sides of the same problem and as such is something of a hate figure in anti gun control circles
 

 

Nell McCafferty is a much loved and admired advocate of Irish Womens' rights who bravely incurred the wrath of pro-abortionists by questioning the morality of pregnancy terminations. She did not involve herself in shooting sport issues.  Interestingly she enjoys massive support among Irish males for her humour and even-handedness.

Brenda Brooks (left) enjoyed a successful international career in Silhouette competition and later as an organiser

Is the feminist movement something the shooting community should be aware of in the context of Gun Control and Gun Bans?  It's a tricky point. Yesterday we went to the range for our annual recreational blowout with a small group of old friends.  Out of perhaps fifty shooters who used the various range facilities on the day, there were only two women; My wife, Audrey, and my friend Stephanie.  Female interest in shooting is hardly intense.  Audrey put a significant dent in our reserves of reloaded pistol ammunition and black powder and a significant part of my Monday was taken up with re-stuffing .45 Colt cases and scrubbing black powder out of several guns!  I didn’t mind because Audrey cooked lunch – a politically incorrect division of labour that works for us and would probably cause doctrinaire feminists to become apoplectic!  Audrey’s frequent observation that my shooting cronies are really well behaved is something I find endlessly amusing.  They’re not – being a bunch of typical traditional, incorrigible and un-indoctrinated males they stop swearing, farting and belching when a lady is present!  Someone should make feminists of them all and then presumably they will behave badly ALL the time!

Many American women are anti Gun Control while the iconography focuses on rape leading many feminists to complain that feminism is being used by the gun manufacturers to sell guns.

There is a perception in shooting sports that feminists are anti gun and anti-shooting.  Is this perception correct? That there is a low level of interest in guns among women in general is self-evident but are women in general and feminists in particular anti-gun?  If we look to the USA, plagued as it is by mass shootings, it would appear that the anti gun movement is led mainly but not exclusively by women.  Diane Feinstein comes to mind.  Feinstein was the author of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban which expired in 2004.  In 2013, she introduced a new assault weapons bill, which failed to pass.   Similarly in Europe Cecilia Malmström is no fan of shooting sports and secured a political agreement between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission to implement Article 10 of the United Nations' Firearms Protocol that combats the trafficking of civilian firearms which, if used as Malmström intends, will block the export of civilian firearms entirely.  The ranks of the animal rights and anti blood sports movements are well packed with vocal females including Brigitte Bardot a seventies movie queen and Stella McCartney, fashion guru and daughter of the famous Beatle – not the most in touch people on the planet.  As a college Tutor I encountered many young females who were similarly opposed to shooting and hunting.  All were vague about the distinctions between legal and illegal guns and shooting and between hunting and target shooting.  Ian Paisley's "I don't know what it is but I'm agin It" rant comes to mind.  I recall one Christmas after a particularly tiring round of examinations being asked by a nineteen year old girl what I intended doing over the holidays.  I made the mistake, in my frazzled state of answering truthfully; "I might go for a shot".  The question had obviously been a trap one and the young woman came back with "and is that something to be proud of?"  I reminded myself for the thousandth time ; never tell students, especially opinionated and naive young female students anything about yourself.  Interestingly the male students’ attitude to guns was equally uninformed as they tended to think of target shooting as an appendage to paramilitary activity.  A photograph of a victorious International Irish shooting team in Camp Perry produced snide remarks about the “Boys” and the “Ra”.  Broadly speaking my students tended to be abysmally uninformed on the subject of shooting with more females than males opposed to it.  In twenty five years of further education I encountered no more than ten young fellows with a genuine and informed interest in shooting sports and several of those were Russian.  I cannot recall a single female with an interest in shooting.

The extreme feminist anti-gun lobby present liberal gun laws as a violent attack on feminism and women

Feminist websites leave us in no doubt that American feminism has adopted a pro gun control stance.  The following is typical:

"Gun control and feminism are intrinsically linked for myriad reasons, particularly because most mass shooters have a history of violence against women and because guns are frequently a lethal tool of domestic violence — something which disproportionately affects women.  First, as Quartz Media recently reported, a majority of mass shooters in modern American history share common traits: they are male and they have a history of misogynistic and/or abusive behaviour toward women. The Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, fit this bill; he reportedly was known to publicly berate his girlfriend." 

So The alleged misogynistic behaviour of a few sick individuals should be used to justify the disarming of thousands, even millions of law abiding males and American feminism has decided gun owners are as a class, misogynistic.  This is lethally dangerous propaganda by any standards and smells strongly of Fascism.

 

Some American feminist anti-gunners' points of view are convoluted, confusing and incomprehensible

In fairness a minority of feminists have opposed gun control.  On Fri 18 May 2018 the Guardian whose correspondent Arwa Mahdawi is a pro gun control feminist rather grudgingly reported;  "....the last few months have seen a spate of viral social posts by women brandishing guns, apparently in the name of feminism.  On Tuesday, a 22-year-old Kent State University graduate, Kaitlin Marie, garnered headlines after posting graduation photos in which she was holding a semi-automatic rifle. Marie wrote: “As a woman, I refuse to be a victim & the second amendment ensures that I don’t have to be.”  The location at Kent State University is particularly significant as the scene of the Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970.  During a peaceful mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces, twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.

 

And some of the American catchphrases ask difficult to answer questions

Closer to home, Aengus Ó Snodaigh the Sinn Féin TD has said publicly on the Sinn Féin website; "The tightening up of gun licensing laws and the trafficking of illegal guns into the country must be a priority for the Government if we are to tackle this serious societal crisis."  Most gunowners would consider this a dangerous and hypocritical deception because Ó Snodaigh links legally owned firearms with are NOT used in crime with illegal firearms which ARE and as for tightening up gun laws – the Gardaí in the Republic of Ireland have been enforcing a gun ban for fifty years.  He goes on to state that 1,200 legally held firearms had fallen into the hands of criminals in the previous five years and that the way to combat this is to tighten the gun licensing laws.  This is another breath-taking piece of hypocrisy.  Firstly the figure of 1,200 guns stolen is a barefaced lie and secondly the way to prevent crime is to go after the criminals, not the victims whose property has been stolen.  It is the equivalent of demanding a cut in the number of cars as a means of preventing the use of cars in crime.  Mr Ó Snodaigh has a history of very dubious behaviour in public office and it hardly becomes him to point the finger at gun owners  whose behaviour, unlike his, has been with very few exceptions, impeccably upright.  I won’t list Mr O;Snodaigh’s transgressions here – a simple web search will suffice if anyone is interested.

 Both sides are capable of unassailable logic

Women Against Gun Violence focuses on domestic  violence, labels all gunowners as a threat to women  and seems to favour blanket gun bans. 

Gerry Adams was approached some years ago by several gun owners of my acquaintance and asked about his position on firearms to which he replied that Sinn Féin was opposed to all private ownership of guns.  This statement should be seen in the context of the huge number of Protestants who, in the past, held firearm certificates in Northern Ireland and the refusal to grant firearms permits to Catholics.  Like labour in England who opposed hunting to “get at” their Tory political enemies, Adams probably saw gun control as discommoding mainly his Loyalist opponents.  This imbalance has since been redressed and Catholic applicants now receive more equal treatment and Adams has been less vocal on the subject of gun ownership since he was visited by a couple of constituents who explained to him that they and many others were gun owners and wished to pursue their legal sport without being used as a political manoeuvre.  It should also be noted that legal personal protection weapons (PPW’s) are carried by many political figures in Northern Ireland and also by their minders including some in Sinn Féin and the SDLP.  But to return to feminism and guns;  Adams and Ó Snodaigh are male and not properly relevant to this article so where does the darling of Irish Feminism, Mary Lou McDonald, the new leader of Sinn Féin and the woman who is being mentioned as Ireland’s first female Taoiseach stand on gun bans?  To her credit There is no record that I can find of her linking legal gun ownership to crime or misogyny.  Her response to the current Dublin crime wave was to call for increased resources for the Gardai.  To what extent she agrees with or can be held responsible for the hypocritical blustering by Ó Snodaigh is impossible to determine.  Her party has a record of not supporting gun-owner’s rights and she is the party leader so in theory she is responsible for what the party does and says.  She is still a relative newcomer but the impression she gives in interviews is that she is a person who doesn’t tolerate nonsense.  Time will tell.  My worry that Sinn Féin will turn on shooting if their market researchers decide there are votes to be garnered.  

Michael Moore who seems to become more bizarre in his utterances with advancing age has proposed a man should need the signature of one present and one former partner before being granted a firearm permit.  This has enraged many who see it as capitulation to the anti-gun,  anti-democratic feminism

On Sunday 5 August 2018 Cormac McQuinn of the Independent reported: Children Minister Katherine Zappone has said gay people feel “under attack” in the wake of the horror massacre of fifty people in Orlando. “I think President Obama has had to address the American people at least 22 times in relation to gun control.  It must be true to say that he has not managed to get that under control and hopefully once again this will be an occasion where once and for all we can challenge the gun lobby in the United States of America.”  Minister Zappone has nailed her colours to the mast as a pro gun controller and goes a step further than Ó Snodaigh by suggesting gay people in Ireland should live in fear because of events in the USA.  This is the most insidious hypocrisy of all and an outright LIE – gay people in Ireland are NOT under attack by deranged gunmen and Zappone should be ashamed of herself for implying this and suggesting by her use of the royal “We” that the gun control controversy in the USA should be imported as a relevant issue in Irish politics.  Ireland is sufficiently well provided with social inequalities to occupy all of minister Zappone’s reforming energies without turning on legitimate sport.

The most infamous stroke ever pulled against Irish gun owners was Fianna Fail and Dessie o'Malley's Temporary Custody Order, 1972.   All privately held pistols and all rifles over .22 calibre had to be surrendered to the Garda Síochána for a period of one month. When firearms owners returned to reclaim their firearms, they were informed that their licences had expired while their firearms were in custody. Since the firearms were no longer licensed, they could not be returned until a new licence was issued; upon seeking a renewal of their licences, applicants were informed that a new Garda policy was in place that would refuse licence applications for all pistols and all firearms over .22 in calibre. As such, the firearms in Garda custody remained in Garda custody.

There is no need to quote Fianna Fáil statements on gun control – their actions speak loudly enough for them.  They have introduced all of the anti-gun ownership legislation in the Republic of Ireland since the Temporary Firearm Custodial Order of 1972.  Fianna Fáil, desperate as they are to rehabilitate themselves with the electorate after the economic treason they committed against the Irish Republic in 2008, are anti gun ownership especially if they think there are a few votes to be gleaned from it..  The names of Dessie o’Malley and Dermot Ahern, both former FF ministers for justice (?) will be long remembered for their infamous criminalisation of law abiding Irish gun owners.  O’Malley has gone to his eternal reward and On 30 November 2010, Ahern announced his retirement as he has rheumatoid arthritis, a "painful medical condition necessitating heavy medication".  He retires to a combined annual ministerial and TD's pension of €128,300.  Treachery pays.

The late Brian Lenihan senior was once asked by the writer Tim Pat Coogan, as reported in his history of Fianna Fáil, why FF had abandoned Irish Fishermen and traded fishing rights in exchange for EEC concessions to farmers resulting in the Spaniards wiping out Irish Atlantic fish stocks.  His answer was a masterpiece of political treachery.  He said there weren’t enough fishermen in the country to elect a single FF candidate on the first count and that settled the matter.  In other words if you won’t or can’t produce an electorally significant block of votes for the Soldiers of Destiny your rights will be suspended in favour of other groups.  Shooters are in an even more invidious position than commercial fishermen, being fewer in number, and of these many are already FF voters and unprepared to change their votes even when FF suspends their rights.  Turkeys who vote for Christmas cannot expect reprieve.

Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein Leader; Arlene Foster; First Minister, Northern Ireland and Michelle O'Neill Deputy First Minister. Ireland has three prominent and competent female politicians who, if they haven't exactly supported gunowners' rights, have at least not lumped them with violent misogynists.  Perhaps there is hope.

Fine Gael are no friends of the shooting community either.  When the Green Party called for the heads of the Ward Union Hunt they sacrificed them in exchange for a few votes.  The lesson is a sinister one – when political coalitions are being negotiated and minority pressure parties hold the balance of Dáil votes then the major parties will sell down the river any small group that their vote counters decide are expendable.  Since shooters are not prepared to unite and vote in a block to protect their sport then their eventual betrayal by cynical politicians is inevitable.

George Orwell in his classic "Animal farm" warned of the extreme danger of prioritising the rights and privileges of one group over another who then become fascists.  Many people believe that some Womens' Rights activists have crossed over to Feminist / supremacists

Then of course there is the anti-gun stance taken by women who fall into the category we have come to know as "Toxic Feminists". For them, all male physical activities are tainted by what they term “toxic masculinity”- if it is male they are "agin it". They even raised objections to the widespread praise bestowed on the male divers who rescued the Thai cave children.  Apparently there were no female cave divers available but that didn't prevent them ranting on social media about the aforementioned toxic masculinity cult among male cave divers.  There is no recourse with these people who have abandoned all logic and common sense or even a sense of the ridiculous.  Their feminist impulses have taken them across the dividing line that separates ideology from fascism and totalitarianism. They are toxic feminists and impervious to logic or reason and blind to standards of fairness.  Even more insidious than a handful of misguided feminists are a delusional few who have propounded the notion of the moral superiority of women.  Liberal feminism has taken fondly to the insidious notion that women are inherently morally superior to men. At the Women’s March in Washington DC, many women parroted the slogan “Free Melania,” implying that all the evil actions the First Lady has been complicit in were not actions undertaken through her own agency, but rather actions she was forced into by Evil Bad Man Donald Trump. This is a disturbing facet of liberal feminist ideology as it seeks to absolve women of the capacity to be and do immoral or amoral things, and as it creates the framework for a moral means testing of feminist victories.  To put it brutally this is master race ideology in disguise and can lead in only one direction.  These people aren't just crackpots; they are dangerous.  As a veteran of the Civil Rights movement I consider myself a feminist and a proponent of equal rights for all but I am genuinely concerned that a few have, like the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm concocted an ideology that proposes "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others".  And of course Orwell leaves us in NO doubt that this new ideology in question is Fascism.  Today I passed a young mother in the street wearing a “Women are the future” T-Shirt.  “Silly Girl” I thought – women have ALWAYS been the future.  “Out of the mouths of babes and innocents hast thou ordained strength” (Psalms 8:2).

More important than the minority of rabid antis are the ordinary feminist women who want no more than a fair crack of the whip.  How do they feel about shooting?  All hunters agree that their female family members, friends and acquaintances tend to feel sorry for the quarry.  We've all heard; "why do you want to kill the poor deer? What did it do to you". The assumption that the Hunter kills the quarry because of some vague undefined grudge is perplexing.  The answer; "I kill him because I want to eat him" is usually countered with; "you're cruel".  Explaining that an animal felled by a single well-placed shot feels no pain is essentially a waste of breath.  I have been berated by a woman for skinning a deer on the grounds that to do so was cruel to the animal.  My exasperated answer; "he can't feel anything- he's f***ing DEAD!" only elicited an even louder tirade of hysterical abuse.  Women don't like hunting and I'll risk beheading by saying it jars or used to jar with their gentler nature.  It wasn't always so and if one reads the famous zoologist Desmond Morris he explains at considerable length that the hairy Neolithic Hunter who brought home the bacon used always get the prettiest cave girl.  He makes much of the point that the Hunter has swapped his bow and spear for a suit, an executive office and a Mercedes and that female mating preferences have evolved accordingly.  Hairy club-wielding Palaeolithic hunters are out and modern hunters, now called “yuppies” are in. Sorry lads.

Target shooting and female objections to it are more difficult to understand.  Shooting is seen by some women as male empowerment  and as such is suspect.  Interestingly female empowerment is ok and highly desirable.  It’s one of those little hypocrisies that have crept in unnoticed.  Like cruelty to a dead deer carcass this position cannot be assailed with logic.  It is an essentially emotional, partisan and usually not carefully considered response.  I sometimes think it is like watching a loyalist band marching down a street. They might be doing no harm; having fun and playing nice music but half the onlookers are nationalists and are just not comfortable with it culturally, historically or politically.  Guys shooting pistols sometimes unnerve women.  Some of them unnerve me too but that's for another article. Nothing is simple.

Perhaps It comes down to the widespread perception that men are more violent than women and that a man with a gun is to be particularly feared. This is blinkered thinking; women are equally capable of violence (Thatcher had no difficulty with it) but their violence is more likely to be psychological than outrightly physical. Most ordinary people are non-violent and target shooting is positively pacifist compared to the violent shenanigans one routinely sees on football pitches.  As for the likes of Conor McGregor and the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, the less said the better.  If a target shooter exhibited the kind of behaviour we associate with this sport the police would revoke his gun permit and search his gun room for "materials likely to be of use to a terrorist". Yet again we are talking about perceptions and emotional responses derived from biased media reporting of shooting and logic and reason are useless as a defence.  Why do the feminists not shred McGregor for his violent behaviour?  The short answer is that the rules are different for celebrities and whether we approve or not, McGregor is a sex icon and poor old middle-aged potbellied Wully or Paddy down at the range shooting his black powder musket is manifestly not.  Incidentally the same goes for my favourite songwriter, Leonard Cohen who fornicated his way around the world for years and treated women abominably and nary a feminist voice raised in objection.  Old Lenny was sexy too!

It is very interesting that feminists have invested a lot of energy in penetrating previously male dominated sports like golf, boxing and football but not shooting. The small number of women in shooting sports tend to be very successful and involve themselves in organisational activities, committees and so on and the sport benefits disproportionately from their efforts.  If women are not excluded from shooting sports then the dearth of women in our ranks must be the result of simple lack of interest and if women are not interested in shooting they are unlikely to support our right to own guns.  Interestingly countries with partial gun bans often allow a privileged few to compete in Olympic shooting events - it projects a desirable but false national image of a people and government in harmony.

Then there are those appalling school shootings. So far the perpetrators have been all male and the resulting surge of anti-gun sentiment has been  led mostly by young women. These are deep waters indeed and have led some people into even deeper and more dangerous waters. Apparently school bullying can result in mass murder. Girls seem to deal with it differently from boys.  Bullying by teenage females is as vicious as that of teenage boys but so far the victims who acquired guns and lashed out at their tormentors, real or imaginary,  have all been boys.  The social Psychologists haven't dissected this phenomenon fully yet and I suspect the answer will constitute uncomfortable comment on the nature of western society.  Desmond Morris, I believe, is right.  We have created a human zoo where our technological development has outstripped our stress-coping mechanisms.  We are naked apes with nukes and we are steaming at full throttle towards a cliff edge.

I have a friend; a woman of much wisdom who says the wonder is that women and men get along as well as they do, considering how so completely different they are.  She has no particular resentment against men as a group - quite the opposite - and marvels at the intensity of the male-female bond.  She is not anti-gun or anti-shooting although she is concerned for the future of wildlife as we all are.  In a sense she represents the feminist middle ground - sort of "don't know what men see in shooting and guns but if it makes them happy, let them at It".  It's a reasonable position that accords male and female obsessions equal status.  Men for their part put up resignedly with female obsessions with fashion, personal hygiene, soap operas and social status.  The problem is that it's a sort of floating vote that could change in response to events and it's the middle ground not the norm.  There is no doubt that women and men are different and anyone who argues otherwise is an idiot.  Men are on average bigger and stronger than women and this discrepancy is what the equality laws are designed to address.  None of this is a problem until  rabid feminists abrogate unto themselves the right to decide which male activities they will tolerate and which they will not.  The corollary of this is that if enough women get together they can use the democratic system to revoke the civil rights of men.  There is, of course no question of regulating female behaviour which is above criticism. The people who have weaponised women’s rights have succeeded in creating a state of gender near-civil war in homes, places of employment, the arts, law and sport.  In many instances gender hostility is replacing racism as a popular blood feud.  This is terribly sad and has, if anything, polarised some sports more than previously.  I sometimes worry in my less sane moments whether shooting sports could become a sort of male wilderness where the boys are boys and swear, fart, belch and shoot unmolested across a cultural landscape few woman have any interest in.  This scenario would be a tragedy.  The admittedly small group of women who frequent the same shooting ranges as myself are all good or great shots and enjoy their sport as much as I do and pull their weight and more.  

My wife, Audrey enjoys target shooting and while she would find some faults with the administration of shooting sports, bias against women is not one of them.  Like most of us she is more concerned for the future of wildlife

I believe we have a difficulty with women and feminism as women are more likely to mistrust shooters and shooting sports.  We have a further difficulty with toxic feminism that sees all male activities as legitimate enemy targets.  We have not made shooting sports as attractive to women and families as some countries have done.  This is not entirely our fault; our planning authorities and police are not exactly shooting-friendly.  On the other hand there are shooting ranges that don't even have ladies' toilets.  Killing, even when done humanely, is distasteful to women although they seem to be unaware that chicken curry was once alive and flapping.  Men behaving confidently and empowered by firearms are absolutely not to be tolerated but there are lots of females who are very comfortable with the concept of a personal protection weapon in a handbag and women empowered by firearms and behaving confidently.  Guns in male hands are getting a lot of very bad press; (knife crime is getting an easy ride).  Here too there is naiveté as no-one seems to acknowledge that the worst genocide in recent history (Rwanda) was perpetrated by people with machetes, not guns.  And all the while violent martial sports and the effect they have on impressionable youth are ignored.  There is also, I believe, an invidious fallacy at the heart of all anti-gun movements, feminist and otherwise; that banning guns will achieve something that has eluded mankind and his primitive antecedents since they first evolved – the removal of war and armed conflict from our society.  We have joyfully slaughtered each other with sticks, stones and edged weapons for millions of years and anti-gun laws will not change our essentially violent nature.  This debate would be amusing if there weren’t a quite strong possibility that one day women will use their votes to disarm all shooters which is what seems to be happening in the USA. 

I’ve already been accused of anti-feminist bias for the observations I have made on the subject of feminism and the anti-gun movement.  Sadly, as a retired male of the baby-boomer generation I have reverted to type and become again the rebel I was when I was sixteen with the difference that, being no longer employed or employable and completely free of the stultifying effects of the “system”, I really don’t care what anyone thinks, be they teachers, parents, clergymen, celebrities, politicians or political correctness gurus and of late, Feminists.  My position is simple:  I believe the feminists are good at giving stick but they aren’t quite as good at taking it.  Apart from that observation, I am myself a committed feminist.  Fair play is good sport but many men are beginning to realise that civil rights have been replaced by women’s rights in the minds of some, particularly female, politicians.  During the early Civil Rights protests in Northern Ireland a Loyalist farmer was asked what he thought about the situation.  He replied; “I don’t understand what they want civil rights for – haven’t they got the brew (northern slang for “dole”).  Men and in particular middle-aged men are starting to feel they are in a similar position – that it is acceptable for the larger, more vocal group to have more rights than the smaller group which has been deemed less deserving for whatever reason.  There are more of us than you so we’ll make the rules and you’ll do what you are told.  It’s the weakness in democracy.

Now let me ask an important and controversial question for which I happily expect to be shredded.  Should a male voter consider NOT voting for female candidates in light of their bias in favour of the rights of their own gender?  Then there is the dangerous shift towards quotas of female candidates which would ensure the election of women regardless of ability or track record. If this situation should ever become reality then it would not be unreasonable to say the politics of tribalism and racism has been replaced by the politics of gender.  Or to put it another way: Is genderism the new racism?  If this is the case we really ARE in trouble.

I will quote, at this point, my good friend Roger, a fellow babyboomer rebel with whom I disagree on many things but whose bottle I admire and who recently posted as follows:

“I am a fiscal and moral conservative, which by today's standards, makes me a fascist.

I am heterosexual, which now makes me a homophobe.

I am mostly non-union, which makes me a traitor to the working class and an ally of big business.

I was christened by my parents (who were married in a church), which now labels me as an infidel.

I think and I reason, therefore I doubt much that the main stream media

tells me, which must make me a reactionary.

I am proud of my heritage which makes me a xenophobe.

I value my safety and that of my family and I appreciate the police and the legal system, which makes me a right-wing extremist.

I believe in hard work, fair play, and fair compensation according to each individual's merits, which today makes me an anti-socialist.

I (and most of the folks I know), acquired a fair education without student loan debts and little or no debt at graduation, which makes me some kind of an odd underachiever.

I believe in the defence and protection of the country for and by all citizens and I honour those who served in the Armed Forces, which now

makes me a right wing-militant.

Please help me come to terms with the new me because I'm just not sure who the hell I am anymore! I would like to thank all my friends for sticking with me through these seemingly abrupt, new found changes in my life and my thinking! I just can't imagine or understand what's happened to me so quickly!

Funny it’s all just taken place over the last 7 or 8 years!

As if all this nonsense wasn’t enough to deal with I’m not sure which toilet to go into!”

 

Lest one get the impression that those in Ireland who are concerned for violence against children and families do not see gun ownership as a threat it is well to be aware that a report from the Child and Family Research Centre at NUI Galway by Dr. Noreen Kearns, Liam Coen, & Dr. John Canavan includes recommendations on further restrictions on ownership, licensing, sale and transfer of firearms in Ireland.  (https://aran.library.nuigalway.ie/bitstream/handle/10379/2467/domestic_violence_in_ireland.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y).  I have read this otherwise admirable piece of research but note the lamentable ignorance of the authors on the subject of firearms legislation.