Freedom in Ireland - a small step in the right direction - citizenstuart

Freedom in Ireland - a small step in the right direction

Target Shooting Ireland have a very interesting story on their website. It seems that Frank Brophy, a citizen of the Republic of Ireland has won a court case appealing against the decision of his local Garda to refuse him a license to own a pistol. This will make Mr Brophy the first private citizen in the Republic for over thirty years to legally own a pistol. The Irish government has the same paranoid attitude towards its own citizens having weapons as the British government does. It seems back in the seventies the Irish government had a mass roundup of legally-owned firearms (using the usual excuse of fighting terrorism), returned some of them - mostly .22 rifles and shotguns, I think - and put the rest into storage or else disposed of them. Since then, even though there's never been a formal ban they've refused to grant licenses for pistols and some other types of firearms. So this is a bit of a landmark ruling.

The gun that Mr Brophy is buying is one of these:

It's what's known as a Free Pistol, which is a dedicated single-shot .22 target weapon used in slowfire competition by top-notch marksmen all the way up to Olympic level. It's a bit more specialised than most pistol shooters would buy just for informal target shooting at the range, and definitely not the best weapon for self-defence, but maybe the fact that there is now one legal pistol shooter in the Republic will start to open the door for the rest. Personally, I'd like to see a completely free market in guns, so that little old ladies, the handicapped, members of ethnic minorities etc could buy guns and protect themselves from violent criminals, so this is nothing like a perfect solution. But it is a small step in the right direction. Change comes a step at a time. For now, the Republic of Ireland is a slightly more free place than it was before.

5.8.04 21:46

Permalink

To date 0 Comment(s) TrackBack-URL