Gun laws and individual freedom in Ireland

Dankoozy

RedPlanet wrote: »

Yeah but c'mon, boxing isn't it one of those elitest niche sports where everyone gets a medal.

boxing is fairly 'niche' too. nothing elitist about it, i don't know where you get that impression from.

shooting is a perfectly legitimate sport and of course infinitely safer than boxing

Sparks

RedPlanet wrote: »

Yeah but c'mon, boxing isn't it one of those elitest niche sports where everyone gets a medal.

Everyone gets a medal Arf!

Manic Moran

I haven't heard the same amount of concern for our "freedoms" when other weapons get banned, samurai swords for example.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055669574

is the most recent thread on the subject.

Some guns are designed for killing, yes. But they're designed for killing rabbits or foxes or deer or boar or other food or vermin animals. Very, very, very few guns (and frankly, you wouldn't get past thirty models) are designed for killing humans (AK47s, P90s, M-16s, M-4s, and purpose-built sniper rifles, and that kind of military hardware).

Even that is sortof irrelevant anyway. The problem we're having in the US is that politicians who know nothing of the subject, for some bizarre reason think that Evil Black Rifles are more dangerous than traditional-looking hunting rifles. AR-15s (Think M-16 without the full-auto switch) are the most popular small-game hunting rifle being sold in the US right now because of the low-recoil small cartridge, light weight, flexibility and great ergonomics. (Plus a lot of people know how to use and maintain it). In fact, it's so much less lethal that in many States it's illegal to use it to hunt deer as it won't be 'humane' enough.

That's why there has never been a workable attempt in the US to legislate what sort of firearms are legal. It's proven impossible to distinguish in legislation between something like an L1 battle rifle carried by the British Army in the Falklands and the Remington 742 deer-hunting rifle. Instead, the focus should be on 'who can legally own a firearm', which was generally what the system used to exclusively be in Ireland before the Government decided to arbitrarily declared certain firearms to be evil.

Moving to areas outside the scope of Ireland (in the current political climate, at any rate, 90 years ago the situation was slightly different.) and moving to general philosophy:

Do you think if the state turns on you that having one gun or twenty is going to save you?

Certainly no point in making life easy for the opposition.

The Chief Justice of the 9th Circuit Court in the US is Romanian (Covers most of the Western States, and thus is the largest after the Supreme Court). Alex Kozinski. Parents were Holocaust survivors, and he grew up in Romania a gun-free country, notable for its individual freedoms in the 50s and 60s before his family managed to make its way to the US. He had the following to say on the subject when the issue came up before him:

The majority falls prey to the delusion -- popular in some circles -- that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth -- born of experience -- is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people. Our own sorry history bears this out: Disarmament was the tool of choice for subjugating both slaves and free blacks in the South. In Florida, patrols searched blacks' homes for weapons, confiscated those found and punished their owners without judicial process[...]A revolt by Nat Turner and a few dozen other armed blacks could be put down without much difficulty; one by four million armed blacks would have meant big trouble.

All too many of the other great tragedies of history -- Stalin's atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few -- were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 5997-99. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees*. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

(Emphasis mine). One gun or twenty, no. But a populace gets a lot more interesting.

NTM

Rovi

Manic Moran wrote: »

AR-15s (Think M-16 without the full-auto switch) are the most popular small-game hunting rifle being sold in the US right now because of the low-recoil small cartridge, light weight, flexibility and great ergonomics. (Plus a lot of people know how to use and maintain it). In fact, it's so much less lethal that in many States it's illegal to use it to hunt deer as it won't be 'humane' enough.

It would also be illegal on deer here, as would the Irish Army's Steyr AUG (in semi-automatic) which uses the same calibre/ammunition , on the grounds of possessing insufficient 'power' to be humane.

nesf

Manic Moran wrote: »

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055669574

is the most recent thread on the subject.



Even that is sortof irrelevant anyway. The problem we're having in the US is that politicians who know nothing of the subject, for some bizarre reason think that Evil Black Rifles are more dangerous than traditional-looking hunting rifles. AR-15s (Think M-16 without the full-auto switch) are the most popular small-game hunting rifle being sold in the US right now because of the low-recoil small cartridge, light weight, flexibility and great ergonomics. (Plus a lot of people know how to use and maintain it). In fact, it's so much less lethal that in many States it's illegal to use it to hunt deer as it won't be 'humane' enough.

That's why there has never been a workable attempt in the US to legislate what sort of firearms are legal. It's proven impossible to distinguish in legislation between something like an L1 battle rifle carried by the British Army in the Falklands and the Remington 742 deer-hunting rifle. Instead, the focus should be on 'who can legally own a firearm', which was generally what the system used to exclusively be in Ireland before the Government decided to arbitrarily declared certain firearms to be evil.

Moving to areas outside the scope of Ireland (in the current political climate, at any rate, 90 years ago the situation was slightly different.) and moving to general philosophy:



Certainly no point in making life easy for the opposition.

The Chief Justice of the 9th Circuit Court in the US is Romanian (Covers most of the Western States, and thus is the largest after the Supreme Court). Alex Kozinski. Parents were Holocaust survivors, and he grew up in Romania a gun-free country, notable for its individual freedoms in the 50s and 60s before his family managed to make its way to the US. He had the following to say on the subject when the issue came up before him:



(Emphasis mine). One gun or twenty, no. But a populace gets a lot more interesting.

NTM

Honestly, the right to own improvised explosives would be more apt than the right to own rifles in this day and age given how technology has progressed since the time of the American Constitution.

dresden8

RedPlanet wrote: »

Well, you've one helluva hill to climb if you think you'll get folks generally agreeing that guns are not weapons. Good luck with that.


Oxford English dictionary:
gun

• noun 1 a weapon incorporating a metal tube from which bullets or shells are propelled by explosive force. 2 a device for discharging something (e.g. grease) in a required direction. 3 N. Amer. a gunman: a hired gun.

What about that knife you eat your steak with.

Good luck eating it with a spoon when your weapon-like knife is banned

As a weapon, the knife is universally adopted as an essential tool.

.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife

Oh my God, people who eat use knives to eat steak are paedophiles who murder children in schools. How can you sleep at night.

Why are knives needed at all?

http://www.falkirkherald.co.uk/news/Row-rages-over-school-knife.4879164.jp

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/4111080.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/northamptonshire/7365248.stm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1547949/Boy-was-schools-second-knife-victim-in-weeks.html

You knife wielding maniac. Shame on you, why do you need to carry a weapon such as a knife, to eat your dinner?

Feasting on death!

Surely I could get a job as a tabloid headline writer.

Nodin

dresden8 wrote: »

What about that knife you eat your steak with.

Good luck eating it with a spoon when your weapon-like knife is banned

Now there's no need for hysteria.

I'm sure that the Garda appointed to cut the meat in his local area will do a wonderful job.

dresden8

Nodin wrote: »

Now there's no need for hysteria.

I'm sure that the Garda appointed to cut the meat in his local area will do a wonderful job.

That's the level of hysteria a target shooter has to put up with.

Whereas my comment is tongue in cheek and your comment is a mild response, the real political hysteria is contained in actual full-on legislation.

Little Dermo has positioned himself as the hard-man of Fianna Fail at the expenso of shooters. And it's nothing to do with firearms safety.

It's a turf war with Martin, and legitimate shooters are suffering.

My posts to this effect were deleted from the shooting forum several months ago as they were seen as "unhelpful".

Even the mainstream shooters have come on board now.

Manic Moran

Honestly, the right to own improvised explosives would be more apt than the right to own rifles in this day and age given how technology has progressed since the time of the American Constitution.

Nothing is more important in conflict than a man on the ground with a rifle. Everything else is simply a force multiplier.

NTM

nesf

Manic Moran wrote: »

Nothing is more important in conflict than a man on the ground with a rifle. Everything else is simply a force multiplier.

NTM

Yeah but an untrained man versus a trained soldier? I get where you're coming from but I'm really not sure that an armed populace is the deterrent it was when that Amendment was added.

Overheal

Im not sure if the numbers support that argument though NesF.

Imagine for a moment we armed 1/5 of the chinese population with legally owned firearms and put them in the same situation theyve been in today. You would see Civil war overnight.

The difference being that if China had always had civilian firearms they would never have gotten to this point where their citizens are so poorly mistreated. The Chinese government would have had to heed the will of the people rather than simply ignore it, and/or subjugate countries/"provinces" such as Thailand and Tibet. With a right to bear arms, these countries would have been sovereign Long ago.

Similarly what position would the US be in without private guns? Would America be the True evil Megalomaniac the CTs already think it is? Would we all already be dead?

Nodin

dresden8 wrote: »

That's the level of hysteria a target shooter has to put up with.

Whereas my comment is tongue in cheek and your comment is a mild response, the real political hysteria is contained in actual full-on legislation.

Little Dermo has positioned himself as the hard-man of Fianna Fail at the expenso of shooters. And it's nothing to do with firearms safety.

It's a turf war with Martin, and legitimate shooters are suffering.

My posts to this effect were deleted from the shooting forum several months ago as they were seen as "unhelpful".

Even the mainstream shooters have come on board now.

It's a 'fright to God' as the Father would put it.

In a sense I was lucky, in that I was about to make purchase of the gun safe and make various alterations in preparation for going for the handgun licence.

It wasn't me!

Okay, I'm going to pipe up here and offer a nugget. "Niche sport?" You mean the sport with participation from the highest number of countries in the modern Olympic programme? The oldest sport in the modern Olympic programme and the first medal given out at every games? Niche sport my ballbag!

meathstevie

RedPlanet wrote: »

Yeah but c'mon, boxing isn't it one of those elitest niche sports where everyone gets a medal.

Shooting elitist ? That's the same as saying that boxing clubs are full of scumbags. It just shows how little understanding you have of the shooting community.

The small town gunclub I'm in has the following among it's members : 3 lads on the dole, 2 self employed who're defacto unemployed but can't get the dole, a retired navy sailor, two salesmen, a carpenter, a farmer, a chemist, a mechanic, a public servant, a retired public servant, an apprentice electrician, etc etc.. . Very elitist indeed. We don't do a lot of target shooting we're more into small game hunting and vermin shooting. All of the lads would have a shotgun and most would have a rifle as well ranging from.22lr to .308 and that type of lad is your average Irish gun owner.

BornToKill

donaghs wrote: »

Guns are more widespread in crime, but almost never involving legally held guns

Sparks wrote: »

Not almost. Never. We've repeatedly asked the Minister and the Commissioner in the Dail and in public meetings and always gotten the same answer - there is no recorded case of a stolen but originally legally owned firearm being used in a crime.
(We've then been told "well, we can't prove it but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen". Well, I can't prove there are no china teapots in orbit around pluto, but I can be reasonably sure the best option pending proof is to assume there aren't...)

Sparks, that's just not true. The questions you refer to have always been about handguns and the answers have always been about handguns. It is undeniable that guns have been stolen from their owners and used in crime.

meathstevie

BornToKill, you're probably right when you say that firearms have been stolen from their lawfull owners and been used in crime on some occassions but what Sparks is saying is that the occurence of that sort of incidents is so low, and especially for handguns, that the DoJ has not seen fit to produce figures in relation to this type of incident.

BornToKill

meathstevie wrote: »

BornToKill, you're probably right when you say that firearms have been stolen from their lawfull owners and been used in crime on some occassions but what Sparks is saying is that the occurence of that sort of incidents is so low, and especially for handguns, that the DoJ has not seen fit to produce figures in relation to this type of incident.

Meathstevie, I appreciate your point but that isn't what he is saying though is it? He is saying:

'there is no recorded case of a stolen but originally legally owned firearm being used in a crime.'

and that's just not accurate. There's over 350 licensed guns stolen every year from their owners. Do you reckon that's all down to collectors? Let's be honest, some if not most will get used in crimes.

Rovi

Just so as you guys know, Sparks is AFK for a while, and may not be in a position to reply immediately.
I think I can safely predict that he will indeed respond when he gets the chance.

BornToKill

Rovi wrote: »

I think I can safely predict that he will indeed respond when he gets the chance.

I suspect you are right on that. There's no rush, we can wait.

dresden8

Rovi wrote: »

Just so as you guys know, Sparks is AFK for a while, and may not be in a position to reply immediately.
I think I can safely predict that he will indeed respond when he gets the chance.

AFK?

SeanW

dresden8 wrote: »

AFK?

Away From Keyboard.

sfakiaman

It wasn't me! wrote: »

Okay, I'm going to pipe up here and offer a nugget. "Niche sport?" You mean the sport with participation from the highest number of countries in the modern Olympic programme? The oldest sport in the modern Olympic programme and the first medal given out at every games? Niche sport my ballbag!

IWM, most people these days think sport is when you put on a t'shirt and go down the pub to watch the telly. Niche sports are when people take a gun or fishing rod or golf clubs out into the countryside and actually do something. If sports were rated by the number of participants rather than watchers things would be different.

BornToKill

Sparks wrote: »

Not almost. Never. We've repeatedly asked the Minister and the Commissioner in the Dail and in public meetings and always gotten the same answer - there is no recorded case of a stolen but originally legally owned firearm being used in a crime.
(We've then been told "well, we can't prove it but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen". Well, I can't prove there are no china teapots in orbit around pluto, but I can be reasonably sure the best option pending proof is to assume there aren't...)

Here's just one then:

'MacArthur decided to fund his lifestyle by robbery. First he decided to purchase a gun and responded to an advertisement by Dónal Dunne, a farmer ... who had a shotgun for sale.'

Nodin

BornToKill wrote: »

Here's just one then:

'MacArthur decided to fund his lifestyle by robbery. First he decided to purchase a gun and responded to an advertisement by Dónal Dunne, a farmer ... who had a shotgun for sale.'

Man goes mad (and suffers a longer sentence than many who have done far, far worse),so we therefore legislate all society on the possibility that another might do the same. Great stuff.

Didn't some fellow drive a car at speed down a pedestrianised street a few years back?

BornToKill

Nodin wrote: »

Man goes mad (and suffers a longer sentence than many who have done far, far worse),so we therefore legislate all society on the possibility that another might do the same. Great stuff.

Didn't some fellow drive a car at speed down a pedestrianised street a few years back?

The point here is not the ins-and-outs of a particular case. I cite it only as refutation of the contention that nobody ever took a legally held firearm and used it in a crime.

Since you are keen to discuss this particular case though, I would contend that there's not that many who have done worse. He brutally murdered a young nurse with a hammer then shot a man with his own gun and it seems clear he was only getting started.

I find it hard to regard him as the victim here 'suffering' a long sentence. Up for possible release a few years ago his own mother pleaded that he not be let out. I don't understand at all what you mean by legislating all society. That case was 1982 and I don't recall any legislation as a result.

Nodin

BornToKill wrote: »

The point here is not the ins-and-outs of a particular case.

Conveniently.

BornToKill wrote: »

Since you are keen to discuss this particular case though, I would contend that there's not that many who have done worse.

Try a double murderer who did (I seem to recall) 15 years or so....There were numerous threads about his release.

BornToKill wrote: »

I don't understand at all what you mean by legislating all society. That case was 1982 and I don't recall any legislation as a result.

You're using the example of McCarthur to justify the ministers stance, aren't you?

BornToKill

Nodin wrote: »

Conveniently.

Not at all, I'm happy to discuss it - what do you have to say?

Nodin wrote: »

Try a double murderer who did (I seem to recall) 15 years or so....There were numerous threads about his release.

I don't know to what or whom you refer. Can you give a name or case reference, a link perhaps? Then tell me how it is relevant.

Nodin wrote: »

You're using the example of McCarthur to justify the ministers stance, aren't you?

No. That's some jump there now. And it would be a pretty stupid argument given the 27 year gap.

I was citing one single example of a crime committed using a legally licensed firearm in counterpoint to Spark's assertion that formerly legally held guns have never ever been used in a crime. Perhaps you should allow Sparks a chance to return and reply for himself. It's easier for everyone when the person posting can follow a line of logic.

Nodin

BornToKill wrote: »

I don't know to what or whom you refer. Can you give a name or case reference, a link perhaps? Then tell me how it is relevant.
.

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2009/apr/05/double-killer-to-be-freed/

It's relevant to your comment

Since you are keen to discuss this particular case though, I would contend that there's not that many who have done worse.

as you might realise, if you'd perhaps follow your own advice....

It's easier for everyone when the person posting can follow a line of logic.

BornToKill

BornToKill wrote: »

I would contend that there's not that many who have done worse. He brutally murdered a young nurse with a hammer then shot a man with his own gun and it seems clear he was only getting started.

Okayyy. So to answer my contention that there are not many who have done worse than this double killing you cite an example of a man who committed ... a double killing.

That's not worse. That's the same.

Nodin

BornToKill wrote: »

Okayyy. So to answer my contention that there are not many who have done worse than this particular double killing you cite an example of a man who committed ... a double killing.

...and acted in a far more cunning manner, but served a much lesser sentence.


As this thread is getting entirely derailed, I think it best we agree to drop the subject.