Communicating to all licenced firearms owners

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

I don't think the gardai will be comming to my house to inspect our guns. We had a court case against them a good few years back about this... Judge ruled in favour of us. Do they have a right to check your home? Has it changed?

Sparks

Ahmed Moldy Kindle wrote: »

I don't think the gardai will be comming to my house to inspect our guns. We had a court case against them a good few years back about this... Judge ruled in favour of us. Do they have a right to check your home? Has it changed?

Y'know, even as I facepalm, I'm left thinking that this highlights a problem here - we've had two Firearms Acts and a dozen SIs relating to those Acts and the Guidelines and the FCP announcements and everything else since the Dunne case ... and Ahmed Moldy Kindle is not a unique snowflake in not hearing about any of this.

Wouldn't mind seeing it be shooting.boards.ie that does this since we're fairly NGB-neutral (we just hate everyone to save time), but we need some sort of mechanism to be able to pass on major changes in the law like this to the 200,000-odd people with licenced firearms in this country.

Bananaman

but we need some sort of mechanism to be able to pass on major changes in the law like this to the 200,000-odd people with licenced firearms in this country.

Boards would not be suitable - in fact any form of electronic communication would not be suitable. I still know plenty of peopl e- who work in software - who cannot get broadband at home - except over mobile networks.

As the vast majority of the 200,000 licenses would be held by people in rural areas it does not make sense to require them to check their email or boards to know what is going on.

At best there are probably 100 (posters and lurkers) on this board so they constitute little more than a flea on a pimple on the arse of the behemoth that is the shooting community.

The Clubs are all registered with the Gardai - if they need to be notified of information then the clubs should be notified (post, email, phone call, vist, whatever suits the local station) and they tell their members.

If that is deemed to be too many then the SSAI and NARGC cover all target and game clubs so they can just inform them and they can inform their member clubs and so on.

The Bush telegraph works for a reason.

B'Man

pedroeibar

Sparks wrote: »

Y'know, even as I facepalm, I'm left thinking that this highlights a problem here - we've had two Firearms Acts and a dozen SIs relating to those Acts and the Guidelines and the FCP announcements and everything else since the Dunne case ... and Iamxavier is not a unique snowflake in not hearing about any of this.

Wouldn't mind seeing it be shooting.boards.ie that does this since we're fairly NGB-neutral (we just hate everyone to save time), but we need some sort of mechanism to be able to pass on major changes in the law like this to the 200,000-odd people with licenced firearms in this country.

Post no. 13 http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055672336

Also, I'm still waiting to get the forms at the station, despite 3 visits and a promise last night that "he" would phone me.

Jumping up and down is not going to help....

Sparks

Bananaman wrote: »

Boards would not be suitable - in fact any form of electronic communication would not be suitable.

I know there are disadvantages B'man, but I didn't say "it's us or nothing" and despite the disadvantages, we reach quite a few people.

I still know plenty of peopl e- who work in software - who cannot get broadband at home - except over mobile networks.

Tell them about m.boards.ie so, the low-bandwidth version of boards

As the vast majority of the 200,000 licenses would be held by people in rural areas it does not make sense to require them to check their email or boards to know what is going on.

Okay, whoa. I didn't say a mandatory condition of their licences should be that they check boards.ie regularly! I mean that we need some way to communicate to them, not for them to come to us!

At best there are probably 100 (posters and lurkers) on this board so they constitute little more than a flea on a pimple on the arse of the behemoth that is the shooting community.

Well, first off, it's a lot more than 100. Seriously. I've seen the stats. We're reaching about a hundred times more than that. And for those who've not heard yet, boards.ie the website is now third in the country as a media entity only to RTE and the Independent Media Group (and we mean the entire Group there). We're bigger than the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Irish Examiner, and every other newspaper and radio station and TV3 and TG4. And the shooting forum is tied to that; so we have a fairly extensive audience here from the get-go.

And I like to think of our posters here as the cream of the crop, rather than the flea on the pimple on the arse of the community, despite what certain banned troublemakers will happily tell anyone at shoots :pac:

The Clubs are all registered with the Gardai - if they need to be notified of information then the clubs should be notified (post, email, phone call, vist, whatever suits the local station) and they tell their members.

But - as we're seeing even in our subset here - not everyone's in a Club. Or an association. Many are just independent of all of this.

The Bush telegraph works for a reason.

Yes - lack of any alternative.
However, in 2009, you'll find that neither Bush nor Telegraphs are things the world has much use for anymore :pac:

Rovi

I'd be of a similar opinion; while we all follow our little corner of the Interwebs here, the vast majority of Irish firearm cert holders aren't here.
Indeed, a goodly proportion of them would be barely computer literate, and they're certainly not going to trawl through an Internet forum looking for information.

As I've said before somewhere else here, I'm a member of IFA (whose membership allegedly comprise the majority of cert holders), and I've heard not one single word (by post, electronically, or verbally) from them on this subject.
Incidentally, the same can be said for the NARGC, whom I'm also a member of. Not a peep.
Putting stuff on their websites isn't good enough, for the reasons outlined above.

I know some clubs and groups are trying to help their members through all this, but they're having to put together their information from various sources in the DoJ, Gardai (local and at management level), here, and wherever else they can find it.

While the DoJ might like to hand off responsibility for informing Firearm Cert holders to the many and various representative organisations, they're the only ones with a full list of the names and addresses of ALL the cert holders in the country.
Some sort of explanatory leaflet enclosed with the extension letters might have been a good idea.

rrpc

Rovi wrote: »

While the DoJ might like to hand off responsibility for informing Firearm Cert holders to the many and various representative organisations, they're the only ones with a full list of the names and addresses of ALL the cert holders in the country.
Some sort of explanatory leaflet enclosed with the extension letters might have been a good idea.

People seem to have great trouble dividing what the legislature in it's wisdom declared divided and independent many years ago.

The DoJ and the Gardai are not the same thing.......

Bananaman

We're reaching about a hundred times more than that

i meant shooters - out of the 200,000 license holders - very few (I'm guesstimating about 100 who are mostly pistol shooters) of those read boards so an announcement on here will not inform the shooting community of bugger all.

By all means have public announcements copied here but under no circumstances assume that this board has any real reach to the majority of license holders.

But - as we're seeing even in our subset here - not everyone's in a Club. Or an association. Many are just independent of all of this.

People are members of clubs - that is where the rubber meets the road.

Associations are just marzipan - looks pretty but you can't take much of it and scrape it off to get at the cake anyway.

If the shooting community need to be informed of something then they should be informed through their clubs - the SSAI and NARGC cover all clubs between them so can be used as a conduit by the Gardai.

If people have questions regarding forms, licensing, etc they should first seek the advice of their club.

if they are not members of a club then the onus is on them to keep themselves up to date or else the onus is on the Gardai/DOJ to inform them individually - they are the only ones have the details.

My 2c.

B'Man

Sparks

Bananaman wrote: »

i meant shooters

And so did I. We do reach a lot more than shooters, yes, but what we're seeing just doesn't bear out your 100 number. Leaving aside the point that you can't tell who lurks here, you're forgetting that for everyone who reads here, there's three or four or even more who learn about what's said here from those who read here.
It's not as direct as we'd like, certainly, but that's how it tends to go.

By all means have public announcements copied here but under no circumstances assume that this board has any real reach to the majority of license holders.

Sorry B'man, but we've more reach than most.

People are members of clubs - that is where the rubber meets the road.

Except those who aren't. Who are the vast, vast, vast majority of shooters. You get the odd farmer who's a club member, but they're rare.

Associations are just marzipan - looks pretty but you can't take much of it and scrape it off to get at the cake anyway.

I'm stealing that analogy if you don't mind

If the shooting community need to be informed of something then they should be informed through their clubs - the SSAI and NARGC cover all clubs between them so can be used as a conduit by the Gardai.

Hey, if they want to step up and do that (and to be fair the SSAI are trying - but even they've got an official rep on here), then I'm not going to stand in their way (hell, even if I wanted to, I couldn't). And in case you missed it, I'm all for the information being shared. But that's just not how our NGBs and Associations think, it's a completely foreign mindset to many of them, and a not-yet-fully-trusted new idea to the rest.
But hey, if all we do is set an example and then they turn around and do it better than us, well, brilliant. Win-win all round.

if they are not members of a club then the onus is on them to keep themselves up to date

And we're a decent resource for them to do that with.
There's room for more than just one good way to do it (though I personally think there's not even enough room for one bad way because of the damage it can cause).

Sparks

And that we've more reach than most, by the way, doesn't mean we reach even 10% of the community, but as Rovi points out, we're doing a damn sight better than even the biggest NGBs and Associations. Mainly becuase we actually do it. I mean, if the NARGC wanted to, they could do a maildrop and reach 15% of the community that way. Right now, I think we're somewhere just below the 10% mark - but the NARGC doesn't do maildrops and we put stuff out there all the time, so we're the better resource right now.

I'd like to see that change, to be honest. Hell, I'd like for here to facilitate that change. We've already got an offical SSAI rep posting here, I'd love to see official reps posting from the DoJ, Gardai, all the NGBs and Associations, the Sports Council, Coillte, the works. And openly. I mean, I know of a few posters who are on the various NGBs, but they don't post as reps for those NGBs because (a) they'd be mobbed and (b) what if they post on something personal like "I like bananas" - well, okay, that's an obvious case, but how do you tell where the NGB stops and the personal stuff starts? We need official accounts for these folks. Get them in here, give them a space to let them answer questions from the community directly, that sort of thing.

But I think that that highlights another reason why we're better at this than the NGBs and Associations - if you got a maildrop from the NARGC, yes, it reaches 15% of the community. What if you've a question with something in the maildrop or there's an error in there though? It's one-way communication. Here, if you've a question or a comment, you post it and it's not an afterthought, it's the core of what we do in here.

Has to be room for that sort of thing. I mean, how many crappy things that have happened to us as a community over the years would not have happened if we'd had a space like this and everyone had not only known what was happening, but could question it and comment on it and make suggestions?

I think we'd be a bit better off than we are today.

Sam I Am

I'm not a Club or Association or anything member. I joined here to try to get my head around what was going on.
While I knew that the legal situation was being evaluated and changing, that's been going on for years. So I did not realise that we had actually reached the point of change. The first I knew of that was the Extension letter that came in the Post.
An enclosed explanatory leaflet would have been wonderful. But the PTB obviously didn't know enough themselves at the time to produce such a document.
I gather that some larger Garda Stations have Firearms Officers or something. But if the majority of licence holders are rural farmers, I would assume that it's quite a small proportion of licence holders that have access to such a Garda.
In reality my first port of call to get information would be the local Garda. But in my paranoia, I don't want to do that, because I don't feel sufficiently informed and I worry that if I ask the "wrong" sort of question, perhaps he'll get suspicious about IDK-what and I'll end up losing my licence altogether.

clivej

Point of fact
My son who has 2 licenses is still under the notion that he has to go down to the local station "To collect" his licenses. This is after he got his extension letters.

I've tried to explain it all to him but he's not cottoned on yet.

Grizzly 45

Throwing out a few "Back of an envelope ideas" here;
As you were saying Sparks,getting info out to people is the big one,and bar Boards,there isnt any real fast media info spreader,that we would have access to.Conversly the majority of people who need this info are not exactly computor literate,or B Band connected,or technophobes.

Podcast interviews, or reports and updates of the people you mentioned,or of vitally important events...Where more computor literate folks could download and take to their respective clubs,houses or pubs to play for those who dont know how or cant.The old idea of the school master or parish preist doing the reading and writing for those who didnt have "the power of words"in the olden days.
The "podcaster" notes comments,quiries and returns it to the base,and this feeds back out to the questioner within the next three weeks.Done on a bi weekly or monthly basis,it should get the info out a lot quicker..Sort of like old style wireless radio shows..."tune in next week..etc"

Chances of setting up like the UK shooting channel,but pre record onto DVD,using the same format ??

Sparks

We certainly could do the podcasting thing Grizzly, but that really isn't the same model as we have here. And to be completely up front about it, I think we do it better here than that. I think when you take information like that, parcel it up and dole it out and control who sees it, when they see it, how they see it and then provide a limited means of feedback, you create the same problems that have plagued sports administration in Ireland for decades, not just in shooting, but in all sports. (Now, when you do the opposite, folks have to grow up a tad, but that's not exactly a harmful side effect )

Frankly, I'd rather we tell them all about m.boards.ie because while not everyone has a computer, damn near everyone has a phone, and many of those phones can do the mobile internet dance.

Grizzly 45

Or how about the grassroots idea via text message??IE important firearms liscense update,read it on boards.ie.Somthing that alerts folks,the more they see boards.ie the more they will try and tune in??

Sparks

Also very doable, but you'd have to make it opt-in (ethically speaking) and I don't think they take your mobile number on the FCA1 form (they do take a contact phone number, but not specifically a mobile phone number). And even if you wanted to do a mandatory, sign up as a licence precondition, only-for-garda-use setup there, the phone number isn't mandatory.

That's not to say it's not a good thing - WTSC has an account with a crowd called Clickatell who give you a web interface to send SMS messages from on the cheap and all our members are signed up to it. It's proven very handy for sending round notices and such. Plus, reply SMSs can be handled, and you can split the list of users into various groups (like rifle shooters, pistol shooters, etc, etc).

PJ Hunter

the average fella not in any club is lightly to apply when the extention is up. even the local guard who hunts is applying then as he reckons theres a crackdown on permissions, reckons he'll need all the way up to the 31st to covere his arse . first in first served, any more permissions given out will depend on the size of land.:o

johngalway

Two words.

Farmers Journal.

What ya do with them two words is up to ye

Invincible

Ah but John,not everybody reads the Farmers Journal.As someone said earlier texts are the way to go,even the bloodbank have copped on to that!

johngalway

But farmers do, and that's who I was talking about seeing the comments on thread You'd be surprised what gets talked about at marts when you're there with lambs and got four or five hours of sweet feck all to do before the auctioneer turns up.

PJ Hunter

johngalway wrote: »

Two words.

Farmers Journal.

What ya do with them two words is up to ye

http://www.farmersjournal.ie/about/aboutus/staffcontacts.shtml

IRLConor

To be honest, without the cooperation of the Gardai, communicating with anything more than a tiny fraction of the shooting community becomes a big effort.

To reach a majority of firearms owners in Ireland you'd need a lot of different people (IFA + NARGC + SSAI + NTSA at the very least) to pass the word and even then I wouldn't be sure that you'd get more than 75%.

Simplest thing would be for the Gardai to do a mailshot to all license holders along the following lines any time the legislation changes:

Dear <name>,

On the <insert date> the Minister for Justice signed the XYZ amendment to the Firearms Act into law. This amendment changes the status of spud guns to super-special-dangerous firearms if they had been originally licensed during a full moon. To find out how this legislation might affect you please contact your club. If you are not a member of a club you can contact one of the following bodies:

<insert contact details for IFA, NARGC, SSAI, etc here>

Regards,

Your friendly police force

Fund this out of the license fee, the law changes rarely enough that it wouldn't be a burden. Also, there'd probably be a Garda productivity increase from not having to answer the same questions over and over from confused firearms owners and also from having fewer people to chase down around renewals time.

As for this forum, well, we're still growing but I can't see us reaching a majority of firearms owners any time soon. This week, the peak number of concurrent users was 76. In the month of August, 399 different users posted in the shooting forums. It's hard to figure out the total audience size for the forum, but "several thousand" would be fair. Going on rough estimates of both the audience here and the number of distinct license holders in the country I'd estimate the reach of this forum to be about 2% or so (+/- 1.5%).

Sparks

IRLConor wrote: »

Simplest thing would be for the Gardai to do a mailshot to all license holders along the following lines

I doubt the Gardai would officially point anyone to non-state unincorporated associations (and limited companies) like that though. I know they've done it unofficially, we know they've even pointed people to here; but not officially.

This week, the peak number of concurrent users was 76.

Yes, but that's concurrent How often do you get 76 people spontaenously show up in the same room for target shooting?

It's hard to figure out the total audience size for the forum, but "several thousand" would be fair. Going on rough estimates of both the audience here and the number of distinct license holders in the country I'd estimate the reach of this forum to be about 2% or so (+/- 1.5%).

I'd estimate higher; you can't just say (for example) that we reach 1000 readers and since one in every 20 people in Ireland has a firearm's licence, we're reaching 50 shooters.

The thing is, we're a Shooting forum, and while you'll get interested non-shooters looking about (and hello and you're all welcome!), we're going to get a higher percentage of shooters in that number than you'd get in a random sample of the general population. My guess is that at least half the people reading here are shooters; and that we're reaching somewhere around the 4-5% mark, maybe higher during peak times, of the community, but in an uneven way, with far more of the target shooting and hunting people than farming people; and with further unevenness within them - we definitely have more vocal pistol people than shotgun people, for example, but figuring out if we have more is more difficult to say.

But then, that's direct contact, don't forget - we can count on at least doubling that, if not far higher multipliers when you take into account the by-now near-tradition of bitching about boards at the range in between details

Bananaman

How often do you get 76 people spontaenously show up in the same room for target shooting?

A fair bit.

I've been at pistol competitions, in Ireland, many times, where there were more than that number of competitors (probably accounts for the vast majority of the active pistol target shooters though)

B'Man

IRLConor

Sparks wrote: »

I'd estimate higher; you can't just say (for example) that we reach 1000 readers and since one in every 20 people in Ireland has a firearm's licence, we're reaching 50 shooters.

I was actually assuming that all the audience were shooters.

On the other hand, I messed up the figures last night and underestimated some bits. The audience for this forum is (conservatively) about 7,500 unique users. Assume that two thirds are shooters, make it 5,000. That's my estimate of the audience for the month of August.

That's somewhere between 2.5 and 5% of firearms owners in Ireland. Still a small chunk, but not insignificant either.

Sparks

Bananaman wrote: »

A fair bit.

Spontaneously being the key word there B'man. If you're required to be there, or if there's a pre-agreed set time and date, it's a different ball of wax.

Sparks

IRLConor wrote: »

That's somewhere between 2.5 and 5% of firearms owners in Ireland. Still a small chunk, but not insignificant either.

That tallies with my guesstimates as well. And it's more significant because noone else has ever managed to get that high a number into a forum (virtual or physical) where they have the opportunity (and at very low cost) to participate in the discussion.