Apparently firearms are only partly legal in Ireland, oh the ignorance

newby.204

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=53112764&posted=1#post53112764

Have a look at the second post down by "Frederico". What has the firearms situatuin in the USA have to do with us. It makes me laugh, then weep at the ignorance:mad:

astraboy

Don't worry about it too much, the guys next post shows that he has little knowledge of U.S. law regarding firearms even though that is what is being discussed. People with little or no knowledge or exposure to shooting sports in Ireland are bound to have misconceptions about how things work over here, or indeed in most places regarding gun licensing.

Umiq88

People are very ignorant of gun laws especially in Ireland.

Just out of interest what is the figure of licensed guns in the county (rifles/handguns/shotguns)

Have handguns hit the 1000 mark yet?

Sparks

New figures being asked for tomorrow psitta, but last I heard, 560 handguns and about 230,000 overall, but while that handgun figure is from March, I don't know about how old the overall figure is.

astraboy

So there are 560 legally held handguns in this country, with a pop of approx 4 million. Seems a massive stretch of the imagination to say we have an issue with too many handgun licenses being handed out! There are probably far far more illegitimate handguns and other weapons in the hands of criminals. Obviously there is also going to be a "rise" in the number of applications as people can only get handguns for the last 3 years and the sport is growing continuously.

Sparks

Seems a massive stretch of the imagination to say we have an issue with too many handgun licenses being handed out!

From an email reply to the chap who wrote the Examiner article the other day:

1. concern rise in hangun licences - some of supts did express a serious concern on this. DoJ stats show 560 handguns are now licenced, since law changed in 2001.

Indeed.
Did they indicate the rise in the licencing of other kinds of firearms as well, or show you the relative percentages of shotguns, rifles and pistols on the books? In 1996 there were 197,886 firearms licenced in the state in total; now there are approximately 230,000 (I'll have an exact figure by wednesday). That's a rise of 23,000 in just over ten years; that's roughly 2300 per year. Call it 2000 for round numbers. 560 pistols in six years is just over 90 per year.
90 per year out of 2000? That's what, 4.5%?

Did they point out how many of those pistols were already legally owned by people in the state since before 1972 and were being licenced again for the first time since then? There are probably less than half that many actually new pistols in the country at the moment. So that's what, 2.25%?

On top of which, did they tell you that to get a licence for anything other than an air pistol, you will be told to get a gun safe and to have a monitored house alarm with a sensor attached to the safe? Or was that left out to give you the impression that we're all suddenly turning into US gun nuts on the day after the worst mass shooting in US history?