Irish Shooter's Digest hammers Garda document !

17HMR

The ISD isn't pulling any punches in the current issue.

Quite detailed discussion on an internal Garda document entitled " Inspection of Firearms Ranges" that sounds like it was written by Basil Fawlty.... it would hilarious were it not for the fact that it appears this document is already being used as a reference by the force.....(Pages 25-29).

Apparently the Gardai are to reply to the article in the next edition )

And....the Dept of Justice gets "slated" on page 60.

Sparks

17HMR wrote:

The ISD isn't pulling any punches in the current issue.

No, it's not. Pity that they're just shadow boxing though.

Quite detailed discussion on an internal Garda document entitled " Inspection of Firearms Ranges" that sounds like it was written by Basil Fawlty.... it would hilarious were it not for the fact that it appears this document is already being used as a reference by the force.....(Pages 25-29).

Yup. Gardai going about inspecting ranges. As reported here for weeks. And yes, it's being done before they have the legal authority to do so. And yes, we're in the right to be annoyed at it.

Thing is, it's like the argument that the firearms acts being amended by a criminal justice bill was an offensive thing to do for shooters. Sure, you're right, but you're wasting so much time and effort on something that at the end of the day matters as much as the coriolis force does to a rifle bullet. In less than six months, the Gardai will have the legal authority to do this. The law's been signed by the president and is only awaiting the commencement order. So you take a high court case against a garda over this, and you'll find half-way through that the law now says the garda does have the authority to do this. If the case isn't thrown out, you'll have succeded in getting the Garda good and annoyed and you'll have to go back to him in less than a year for an inspection anyways. And how much money will you have spent on the soliciters and barristers? How much better spent would that money have been on coaching courses so your club would have a coach? Or on new gear for beginners? Or on sending a club team to a big match?

It's just not worth it. There'll be plenty of real cases that'll need taking once the commencement orders are signed.

Besides, they ridicule the idea of using military standards for civilian ranges in those pages, and less than a dozen pages further on, Cal Ward's column is advising anyone setting up a new range to use exactly those same standards as the best thing to do. So who do you listen to?

Apparently the Gardai are to reply to the article in the next edition )

And they'll probably say something quite innocous like that they were getting people trained up for their new duties under the new Firearms Act 2006. And that'll be the effective end of it.

And....the Dept of Justice gets "slated" on page 60.

It talks about the "successful Nicolas Flood case" - in fact, Nick's case set no precedent as it never got a hearing as such, the Garda in question informed the court when the case was presented that the licence had already been granted and as such the case wasn't considered. That's a pretty well-known point, and only one person ever asserted that anything else was true. Even the ISD has published notes from the NARGC to that effect in the past.

It's a lot of yelling and fist-waving, and again, those doing the yelling are in fact in the right but being in the right in this case matters just about as much as it matters that you had right of way when the truck hit and killed you as you crossed the road.




I will say one thing that was interesting in that first story though - it criticised the Gardai for thinking that they control the people they're meant to be serving. With a little luck, some shooting associations will read that and take it to heart and start listening to shooters once more instead of laying down edicts for them!