Blanket Ban on Handguns

lostexpectation

some people are there to shoot targets others are there to shoot guns

Lemming

lostexpectation wrote: »

some people are there to shoot targets others are there to shoot guns

Some people go to golf courses to play golf. Some people go to golf courses to 'network'
Some people go to football games to watch football. Some people go to football games to drink and hang out with their mates.
Some people watch tv because something holds their interest. Some people watch tv because they've nothing better to do.

The four important questions to your comment are; yeah? and? so? what?

Your point is?

Nodin

lostexpectation wrote: »

some people are there to shoot targets others are there to shoot guns

And you're here to provoke some sort of hostile reaction.

lostexpectation

no i just want to know the real reason ahern is banning handguns. but nobody wants to talk about that they want to talk about 'target shooting'???

Nodin

lostexpectation wrote: »

no i just want to know the real reason ahern is banning handguns. but nobody wants to talk about that they want to talk about 'target shooting'???

Well then, what do you think the "real reason" is, exactly.

Vegeta

lostexpectation wrote: »

no i just want to know the real reason ahern is banning handguns.

Well isn't that obvious, he wants to be seen to be doing something about gun crime.


It will make fcuk all difference to gun crime, but he will be seen to be doing "something"

Lemming

Vegeta wrote: »

Well isn't that obvious, he wants to be seen to be doing something about gun crime.


It will make fcuk all difference to gun crime, but he will be seen to be doing "something"

Therein lies your motive. RS owners, like pensioners and students (school & third-level) in other recent government hatchet jobs, are perceived to be a soft political target with little fallout. A 'minority' whose vote loss wont be that damaging. Of course, pensioners gave the government a very bloody nose, and it looks like the students, teachers & parents are gearing up to give the government two black eyes to follow suit.

The minister thinks he can look good for little effort. Of course it'll all fall down by the end of the year when gun-crime is still occurring in numbers akin to the previous couple of years. The minister will then shrug his shoulders and say "what do you want me to do?! Shurrre didn't I ban all dem handghunhhs!!! Aren't I great!!"

lostexpectation

Nodin wrote: »

Well then, what do you think the "real reason" is, exactly.

he has been bs'ing about guns being robbed and stuff and i want to highlight populist politicing as much as the next guy but he wants to ban handguns, not target shooting.

he is anti-gun, as they would say in america. i don't think he thinks the public should have guns, and certainly shouldn't be better armed the beat cops.

he's trying to be father to the nation he couldn't a flying f*** about target shooting

He said that the increasing prevalence of handguns had not come about as a result of any deliberate policy decision by the Government or the House.

He said he had previously made clear his concern at the number and type of handguns being licensed and a review of the firearms laws was at its final stages.

"My bottom line is this: while I recognise that the vast majority of handgun owners are responsible people, as Minister my concern is the safety of the public, particularly at a time of concern about gun crime," said Mr Ahern.

"I will make a detailed statement in the near future on this matter." He asked if they wanted "as a country to go down the road of America, Finland and others, where there is a proliferation of handguns".

Mr Ahern said that from the early 1970s, in the light of the Northern troubles, all handguns were banned in the Republic until a few years ago.

Following a series of judicial decisions, that was no longer the case, although there was no public policy decision to lift the ban, he added.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1119/1227026414265.html

Vegeta

Lemming wrote: »

The minister thinks he can look good for little effort. Of course it'll all fall down by the end of the year when gun-crime is still occurring in numbers akin to the previous couple of years. The minister will then shrug his shoulders and say "what do you want me to do?! Shurrre didn't I ban all dem handghunhhs!!! Aren't I great!!"

That's it in a nutshell really

If the Minister wants to do something about legally held firearms getting into the wrong hands all he has to do is review every license at renewal time under the new legislation brought about in the CJA 2006.

Nodin

lostexpectation wrote: »

he has (.......) shooting

Seeing as the vast, vast majority of hand guns are used for target shooting of some description, it amounts to the same thing. It's a distinction not worth making, at all.

lostexpectation

this is the polictics thread, theres another forum for target shooting fans, here we can discuss the politics of handgun ownership as it is dealth with by legalisation.

I think in both a populists manner and a political position dermot ahern and co don't want handguns here, you think its simply a populist motive, but i think your missing out the political position thus leaving out half the argument people need to have with dermot ahern about whether we should have handguns here.

unless somebody can come up with old progun comments from dermot ahern, but considering where he's from i doubt it.

Sparks

i think your missing out the political position

The political position is that they don't have the money to fund the Gardai to do the job of enforcing the legislation they have, so they're going to draft more legislation (in the process engaging in group punishment of us for the crimes of others) to be seen to be doing something.
That's it in a nutshell.
And frankly, pro/anti-gun leanings are as relevant to this as fish are to bicycles. This is cover-thy-posterior politics, plain and simple.

Lemming

lostexpectation wrote: »

this is the polictics thread, theres another forum for target shooting fans, here we can discuss the politics of handgun ownership as it is dealth with by legalisation.

Ummmm ... yeah.

Sure.

You want to debate the politics of a hand-gun ban (in this case) without actually dealing with the subject matter to be banned (in this case hand-guns).

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Ok then.

Righty-ho.

And lets all have a cup of tea whilst waiting for reality to come walking into the room ....


[edit: Sparks beat me to it]

sfakiaman

lostexpectation wrote: »

your missing out the political position

We won't miss out the political position come the next election

lostexpectation

handguns were banned people went to court and overturn the ban fair enough but against the wishes of the last few governments this isn't sudden position ahern adopted after the geoghan or east wall murders stop pretending that it is.

It wasn't me!

lostexpectation wrote: »

handguns were banned people went to court and overturn the ban fair enough but against the wishes of the last few governments this isn't sudden position ahern adopted after the geoghan or east wall murders stop pretending that it is.

There's actually been very little antipathy before Ahern. McDowell and Lenihan were both reasonable. Ahern is the first to really display an agenda against firearms, handguns in particular. He's stated that he wants to address gun crime and gun culture, without rationalising that, he's used these murders to highlight the importance of his policy, and then he's gone and done something absolutely useless. He might as well have made it illegal to grate cheese for all the difference this ban would make to gun crime.

dresden8

lostexpectation wrote: »

no i just want to know the real reason ahern is banning handguns.

Little Dermo needs to be in the papers to keep his profile up as he has ambitions to take over when Cowen's little group of hangers on implode. However, he needs to be in the paper for the right reasons.

He can't be in the paper or on the telly discussing the state of the economy because he can't be linked to the collapse. You may notice he hardly, if ever, discusses the economy. His public support for the current leadership is less than stellar.

He is talking tough, taking "decisive" action and waiting in the wings.

Sparks

lostexpectation wrote: »

handguns were banned people went to court and overturn the ban fair enough

Actually, not fair enough. Handguns were never actually banned in the first place. In 1972, under Dessie O'Malley, a temporary custody order was issued and all legally held firearms were handed over to the Gardai for a period of one month. At the end of the month, people returned to reclaim their firearms but found that those who owned pistols or fullbore rifles (anything over .22 calibre) were not being granted licences - without licences, the firearms could not be released as it would have been illegal to possess or use them, and so they remained in Garda storage (at the state's expense, by the way), for the next thirty-odd years. This turned out to be a Garda and Ministerial policy, and a cynical one at that. At the time, shooters protested that this was illegal (and it was, it was in contravention of the Firearms Act and was in fact technically a case of the Minister and Gardai subverting the Dail) and we were told that if we went to court we'd win; and the Minister would draft a new Firearms Act before the end of the week to overrule the court. Given the security situation up north, we knew we'd never be given a fair trial so it was left go until the peace process got solidly established, at which point we started meeting with the DoJ again to have our firearms returned. We were told that these firearms, which we'd had since before the founding of the state, were now too dangerous to own. By guys like this, which rather rubbed salt in the wound:



So we went to court and the court agreed the policy wasn't legal and ordered that it be set aside. And it was. And now, four years later, with no negative impact on the state as a result of this, and just as the sport was finally starting to get its legs back, the Minister is proposing banning these firearms for the first time not only in the history of the state, but in Irish history as a whole.

This is purely a PR exercise, with the Minister playing to the media in order to not look as inept as the rest of the Cabinet currently look; it is group punishment of innocent people for the crimes of others, whom the Minister doesn't seem to be able to affect. And in the meantime, the 16-year-old who planned and carried out the premeditated murder of Aidan O'Kane and sparked off all of this, is after being released on bail for less than the price of a large-screen TV. FFS.

lostexpectation

so hey weren't banned for 30 years right, semantics.

Lemming

lostexpectation wrote: »

so hey weren't baned for 30 years right, semantics.

In law, an argument can hang (literally) on semantics, so it's Sparks has made a very, very important point regarding the stance of the State.

Further, I should add AFAIK that the State has never stood against people challenging decisions regarding the licensing of fullbore pistols ('fullbore' is it? my knowledge of the technical terms of firearms is lacking. I am referring to hang guns of larger calibre like 9mm, .357, .45mm, etc.). Why do you think that is lostexpectation? Because they knew that there was no legislature against such firearms in law and did not want to set precendent by a ruling in court that they were not certain of winning. Thus no rulings were ever made one way or the other.

Now you have a Minister who is wanting to actually enact legislation banning hang guns in a move that is PR-related and nothing to do with reality or practicality.

Edit: if I recall as well, something similar happened with paintball markers (yes, they are classed as firearms) back in the 1980s whereby owners of markers were forced to surrender their markers to gunsmiths to place in holding since the state wouldn't re-issue licenses. In effect, "outlawing" to use your argument, the ownership of private paintball markers. So ... have you played paintball?

Sparks

lostexpectation wrote: »

so hey weren't baned for 30 years right, semantics.

Missing the point (again). They haven't ever been banned before, so this isn't a return to the status quo as the Minister is selling it as, nor is it a departure from government policy to have them licenced, as he's saying it is; it's a totally new precedent, one unfounded in logic or evidence - and it has nothing to do with the problem it's allegedly going to solve.

Sparks

Lemming wrote: »

('fullbore' is it? my knowledge of the technical terms of firearms is lacking. I am referring to hang guns of larger calibre like 9mm, .357, .45mm, etc.)

Correct. Fullbore is a term which usually refers to a cartridge firearm of any calibre larger than .22lr. All the deadly 9mm Glocks the Minister and the media are going on about are a kind of fullbore pistol. I'd tell you how many there are out there, but every time we've asked the Minister for a breakdown by calibre of the 1750 or so pistols that have been licenced, he tells us that they don't have those figures to hand. In other words, he's going to ban all handguns based on the criminal abuse of fullbore pistols smuggled in with drug consignments, but he can't even tell us how many of the ones that the licenced owners will hand in will be fullbore pistols.

lostexpectation

its been unofficial political policy for 30 years until it was overturned in the courts, thats what new, its not to do with these recent deaths.

ahern does say he allow some olympic target shooting guns to some

Sparks

lostexpectation wrote: »

its been unofficial political policy for 30 years

No, it's just been put on a shelf and forgotten about.

until it was overturned in the courts, thats what new

Actually, the court ruled that the original policy was illegal because a blanket ban, which the policy was, was in fact the Minister adding a bit to the Firearms Act without going through the Dail and thus was completely illegal. So if it was government policy for 30 years (which it wasn't) then the government's policy for 30 years was to illegally ignore and subvert Dail eireann...

, its not to do with these recent deaths.

Horsefeathers. If this was a major problem, do you think McDowell wouldn't have brought in a ban in the Criminal Justice Act 2006 along with all the other changes he made to the firearms act? Do you think Lenihan wouldn't have? No, this isn't in response to crime, this is in response to crime being reported in the media and the Minister looking bad. Make no mistake on that.

Manic Moran

Fullbore is a term which usually refers to a cartridge firearm of any calibre larger than .22lr

In fairness, I think that's actually a misappellation, the distinction between rimfire and centrefire being far more common and accurate. As near as I can determine, 'fullbore' is a term originating in the UK describing a specific rifle discipline using those centrefire cartridges. In the US, 'fullbore' seems to be used exclusively in reference to the rifle competitions using the rules of British origin, and indeed, almost all the 'fullbore' hits you'll find on the Web are British. It seems that the term sortof migrated in the British Isles from the discipline to encompass pretty much any centre-fire rifle which made a loud bang. Thus all 'fullbore' rifles are centrefire rifles, but not all centrefire rifles are 'fullbore' rifles, by the rules of fullbore shooting. For example: http://www.mrpc.info/fullbore.htm gives very specific specifications as to what kinds of rifle down to rifle weight are acceptable for international fullbore shooting.

(If you think of it, even the word 'fullbore' is pretty non-descriptive: What rifle of any calibre or type doesn't use the full bore?)

NTM

Sparks

It's one of those terms Manic that has been around for a long while and has picked up meanings like velcro. In Ireland if you said fullbore to any shooter, they'd understand it to mean a cartridge firearm of calibre greater than .22lr. Rimfire/Centrefire is obviously a lot more "stable" in meaning (for the nonshooters, the terms refer to where the primer is in the round and thus where the firing pin/hammer hits it).