New Minister for Justice

bunny shooter

**cough** he still has his

And I've still got a .22lr that I got with NO hassle

MortgageMan

yes and so do I cough cough cough

All of mine cough again :-)

Sparks

Rosahane wrote: »

It may well be that the FCP has served to enlighten the mandarins in the DOJ. However it could equally be interpeted as the FCP being nothing more that a sop to the involvement and participitation of the shooting community in the decision making process while whatever agenda the DOJ has carries on regardless.

I think if that was true, no-one would have pistols today. We'd all have lost them in November 2008. And after the 2006 Act, it would have been perfectly legal and there wouldn't have been a legal case to take about it.

Instead, we got a convoluted system that took away some pistols but left open a wide door to bring them back in very short order.

Now maybe people don't want to read between the lines, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing there.

However having been involved in the whole IPSA debacle and aftermath I would have to agree with your "marginal buffoons" comment :rolleyes:

Unfortunately true However, we've now seen how to fix that. And we've been working at fixing it for a while now.

The thing is, the IPSA debacle was flagged from before the point when IPSA set up. It was said, many times, that it was going very far very fast and that there were enormous PR problems with it; and ultimately, it was the PR that caused its upset.

The thing is, if we fixed the PR and played the longer, more pragmatic game, there's still hope for the sport.

But you can't do that unless you're talking to people, and that's the real value of the FCP - it's all about talking to people. That's not good enough for those that want to shout at them, but that lot haven't ever gotten us anything that lasted long enough to use it anyway.

MortgageMan

Sparks I am not going to talk for the IPSA, I was a member but not on the committee and will not comment on how they did business.

But I did meet with Justice and crime 4 and FCP and some members of Dail committee to try and safe my sport. Are you finally saying that a cosy deal was agreed between the FCP/Justice/Ministers to sacrifice some shooters for the better of others ?

Please help me to understand this, explain exactly what mean by reading between the lines please, please be as detailed as possible as I for one am sick of trying to read between the lines.

Sparks

MortgageMan wrote: »

Sparks I didn't see you sitting in Dail when the debate was going on about pistol licencing, I didn't see you lobby any ministers when the axe was falling.

Then you weren't looking.
Go back, read the 2004 debates, read the threads from when the axe was falling. All the letters I wrote, the emails I sent, they're all there, as are the accounts of the times I spoke to the DoJ at the FCP conferences while the people who were supposed to be in the sport just sat there and said nothing to them and didn't even try.

I didn't hear of you contact the FCP reps about written correspondance that was read into the record at the Dail debate that put the nail into the pistol shooting communities coffin ?

That wasn't what put the nail in.
The nail when in at the second FCP seminar when the point got made in front of those in the AGS who were strongly opposed to pistols that the IOC rules would allow fullbore pistols too - until that point, only some fullbores (and not the majority of them either) were at risk, after it, all fullbores were in trouble.

Sparks

MortgageMan wrote: »

But I did meet with Justice and crime 4 and FCP and some members of Dail committee to try and safe my sport. Are you finally saying that a cosy deal was agreed between the FCP/Justice/Ministers to sacrifice some shooters for the better of others ?

I'm not saying that because that didn't happen.
I'm saying that the relationships on the FCP stopped the axe that Deasy started swinging from getting rid of all pistols.

Maybe you'd now finally say whether or not you'd rather see some pistols gone or all pistols gone? Are you finally saying openly that if you can't have yours, nobody else is allowed have theirs?

MortgageMan

Sparks dont try to drag me into that small narrow minded community,I would never see another shooting sports man loose his firearm if I couldn't have mine.

I believe that I am better than that and to try and start a mud slinging match is not nice. I will not enter into a childish spate of throwing the toys out of the pram ! too many people have already done that.

Sparks

MortgageMan wrote: »

Sparks dont try to drag me into that small narrow minded community,I would never see another shooting sports man loose his firearm if I couldn't have mine.
I believe that I am better than that and to try and start a mud slinging match is not nice. I will not enter into a childish spate of throwing the toys out of the pram ! too many people have already done that.

You came on here to start the mudslinging there MM, by saying that the ISSF matches you'd seen were unfair and that the shooters in them got beaten by newbies and said the newbies were disqualified as a result. So if it's not nice and childish, what on earth are you up to?

Rosahane

Sparks wrote: »

I think if that was true, no-one would have pistols today. We'd all have lost them in November 2008. And after the 2006 Act, it would have been perfectly legal and there wouldn't have been a legal case to take about it.

Instead, we got a convoluted system that took away some pistols but left open a wide door to bring them back in very short order.

Now maybe people don't want to read between the lines, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing there.

Unfortunately true However, we've now seen how to fix that. And we've been working at fixing it for a while now.

The thing is, the IPSA debacle was flagged from before the point when IPSA set up. It was said, many times, that it was going very far very fast and that there were enormous PR problems with it; and ultimately, it was the PR that caused its upset.

The thing is, if we fixed the PR and played the longer, more pragmatic game, there's still hope for the sport.

But you can't do that unless you're talking to people, and that's the real value of the FCP - it's all about talking to people. That's not good enough for those that want to shout at them, but that lot haven't ever gotten us anything that lasted long enough to use it anyway.

That is exactly the response that I (and many others) believe Garrett Byrne has worked towards, divide and conquer, make sure that the shooting organisation's reps on the FCP are in his pocket and whittle away at the licences :mad:

Anyone who thinks that every pistol licence isn't eventually going to be hit is an idiot!

Thankfully Des Crofton has seen through the duplicity and is leading the charge to do something about it. :cool:

Sparks

Rosahane wrote: »

Thankfully Des Crofton has seen through the duplicity and is leading the charge to do something about it. :cool:

/facepalm
We tried "charging" from the late 90s onwards. Enormous amounts of money, and time and effort were spent and Dunne was the best result obtained -- and Dunne held until the Minister took the five minutes it took to put a single throwaway line in a miscellaneous section at the back of a nondescript bill.
Did no-one get the message that sent out?
You can't beat the Minister with the Courts, not when the Minister can rewrite the law.
You might as well try to earn a living playing roulette.

And anyone who's out to lead a charge like that, with those odds of success, needs their motives more critically examined.

Kilo

Sparks wrote: »

/facepalm
We tried "charging" from the late 90s onwards. Enormous amounts of money, and time and effort were spent and Dunne was the best result obtained -- and Dunne held until the Minister took the five minutes it took to put a single throwaway line in a miscellaneous section at the back of a nondescript bill.
Did no-one get the message that sent out?
You can't beat the Minister with the Courts, not when the Minister can rewrite the law.
You might as well try to earn a living playing roulette.

And anyone who's out to lead a charge like that, with those odds of success, needs their motives more critically examined.

That seems to me to be a dangerous and morally shaky stance to take. Are you suggesting that rather than risk a later rewrite and revision of a law you would prefer to allow injustice to continue unchallenged?

Surely any misapplication of the law or indeed an unfair or unjust law should be challenged vigorously, otherwise anarchy will prevail. The law itself exists to protect people from anarchy. Laws can be changed, anarchy is much harder to stamp out.

Sparks

Kilo wrote: »

That seems to me to be a dangerous and morally shaky stance to take. Are you suggesting that rather than risk a later rewrite and revision of a law you would prefer to allow injustice to continue unchallenged?

No, I'm saying that rather than try an approach to rectifying that problem that's doomed to failure, I'd try one that has a chance of success.

You cannot beat the Government with the Courts. It just can't be done. It's been tried, dozens of times, not just by us but by several other movements as well, and it always, always ends in one of two ways - either you lose in court and that's an enormous financial loss especially if it goes all the way to the Supreme Court, not to mention the damage the precedent does to your sport/cause/whatever ; or, you win in court and the Government issues a new law within a very short space of time. It's happened over and over and over again in Irish life over the past few decades, it's not some special arrangement the Minister for Justice has for shooters.

If you want to change things, you have to work with them, not try to beat them in court.

Rosahane

Sparks wrote: »

/facepalm
We tried "charging" from the late 90s onwards. Enormous amounts of money, and time and effort were spent and Dunne was the best result obtained -- and Dunne held until the Minister took the five minutes it took to put a single throwaway line in a miscellaneous section at the back of a nondescript bill.
Did no-one get the message that sent out?
You can't beat the Minister with the Courts, not when the Minister can rewrite the law.
You might as well try to earn a living playing roulette.

And anyone who's out to lead a charge like that, with those odds of success, needs their motives more critically examined.

Accepted that the Minister has the final say and can screw us around at will. However he is elected to represent US - not himself or ICABS or the Garda Inspectorate or Deasy or whoever.

That said, I don't believe that the current debacle is totally down to the previous Minister. Yes, he had an agenda all right but only to further his own position. He is a dangerous little megalomaniac for sure but what did he know about practical shooting for example?

He had selective information drip fed to him and was manipulated and managed by the DOJ and possibly to some extent, the Commissioner. Thankfully the current Minister has both brains and integrity and isn't going to be fooled by people in the Dept that just want to make a name for themselves. We might get some objectivity now!

You can facepalm all you like, but, it might be worthwhile taking the hands away from the eyes and putting some earplugs in instead, so the whispering from Garrett Byrne and his toadies loses it's effectiveness :rolleyes:

Sparks

Rosahane wrote: »

Accepted that the Minister has the final say and can screw us around at will. However he is elected to represent US - not himself or ICABS or the Garda Inspectorate or Deasy or whoever.

Er, no.
He's elected to represent the people living in his constituency. He is supposed to represent all the people in the State when appointed as a Minister. That (as everyone who's ever seen where funding goes) is something that rarely works like it's supposed to. End result - we claim he should favour our interests, ICABS says he should favour theirs, they have more PR than we do because all they ever do is PR (and 20 people doing PR all the time have more public opinion than 200,000 people who leave it all to two or three people to do PR every so often), and the end result is that we get shafted.

That's why the FCP was good - it meant that the DoJ knows us, face-to-face, knows that we're 200,000 people, not 20, and knows we're a lot more stable than the ICABS mob.

That said, I don't believe that the current debacle is totally down to the previous Minister. Yes, he had an agenda all right but only to further his own position. He is a dangerous little megalomaniac for sure but what did he know about practical shooting for example?

Nothing. He didn't need to know anything about it to ban it. And frankly, I don't think he had anything much against it either; he was concerned with looking bad in the media because he had no comeback to the ranting of Deasy and Mitchell and DeBurca and everyone else on that bandwagon. And we didn't have the PR presence to point out that they were all full of it. "The Minister says everything's grand" doesn't play well in the tabloids, so he figured he had to "look tough". Which is where the "Minister announces complete handgun ban" headlines came from - the fact is, they were accurate at the time and it took work to prevent it being a complete ban.

He had selective information drip fed to him and was manipulated and managed by the DOJ and possibly to some extent, the Commissioner.

Come off it Rosahane, if you could prove that we could stop it. You haven't a shred of evidence for it, just rumours from people who were promoting the FCP as the best thing ever right up until they weren't chosen to sit on it and who then spent months trying to sabotage it, and then those NGBs on it, and making all of us look like idiots at a critical time.
The facts are, Deasy and co wanted a cheap political stunt, we got used for it, and we were crucified over it as a result. We could have avoided it if we'd pushed PR more over the years, and I know I went hoarse saying it in committee after committee and on here, but we've always taken the "hide under a rock" approach to PR -- and it finally came home and bit us in the ass. And now, rather than ever even admit the possibility that we made the mistake, we're looking for a scapegoat.

That's nice and all, but it won't fix the problem or stop it happening again.

MortgageMan

Sparks on one thread you are saying that too much PR killed off one sport and now you saying that too little almost killed off the entire sport ?

On one thread you said about IPSA that bunch did nothing for shooting and on another thread you said you were friends and helped out the committee ?

Can you state one opinion and stick to it ? It seems that your opionion changes to directly contradict whomever you happen to be debating with at that time. I am noticing a trend here.

Sparks

MortgageMan wrote: »

Sparks on one thread you are saying that too much PR killed off one sport and now you saying that too little almost killed off the entire sport ?

No, I didn't say that. I said that bad PR killed off one sport, and too little PR almost killed off the entire sport.

On one thread you said about IPSA that bunch did nothing for shooting and on another thread you said you were friends and helped out the committee ?

Nope, on one thread I said that the court cases taken over pistols didn't bring in change that would have lasted, and on the other thread I pointed out that I helped out the people on the IPSA committee as much as I could at the time.

Can you state one opinion and stick to it ?

I can. Do you think you could read what I write and quote it directly rather than making up stuff about things that are written down in black and white for all to read?

I am noticing a trend here.

So am I - namely that the "facts" you know don't seem to be anything of the sort, and the "facts" you tell us about all seem to be factually inaccurate even when they're sitting right over there for anyone to look at...

MortgageMan

Sparks I spent a full 6 months of my life full time, lobbying, talking, meeting, listening to, writting to Politicians, FCP members, NGBs, Justice, Crime 4. I did not do this alone, there was a team of about 8 people involved some put in a huge amount of time and effort for FREE, just for the love of our sport !!

I can tell you that what we went through, what was thrown at us, what we seen and heard during this time was disgusting. The majority of us stepped down from any further involvement in comittees etc after this.

So please do not preach to me about your facts and theories, I went through it, yes I saw you at some meetings and we talked. Our group also updated you an others regularly as to what was happening and nobody would step up and help.

Sparks

Well done on the six months MM, it's six months more than 98% of the people in the sport ever do.

Some of us, however, did or have been doing this for nearly ten years (and yes, by "this" I mean lobbying/writing/talking/listening to/with Ministers, Junior Ministers, FCP members, Crime 4, the AGS, the FPU, the ISC, the OCI, the DoJ, the DoAST, the dog catcher and his aunt - and the press, the tv, the radio, and the web). So we'd like to think that maybe in that ten years, we learnt something about it that you might not have learnt in six months. Some of us are pretty sick and tired of the continual defamation that gets fired in our general direction by people who normally wouldn't raise a finger to help even when asked, and who usually only start yelling about a problem six years after the window to fix it closed, and who'd ignored calls for help at the point where it could have done some good. If you've done the job for even six months, you should already know the beginnings of this. If you do it for ten years, you know it backwards and forwards and frankly, it'll piss you off every time you see it.

MortgageMan

Sparks the 6 months just to refers to the time that I gave up my day job and fully dedicated my time to it, as I said a few others did the same. We spent many years before that time working on helping the sport.

The team I worked with just wanted to make things better, not worse and frankly if after ten years of lobbying all you can say is read between the lines then something is seriously wrong here. I would have expected a better response from you.

When we met Crime 4 and Justice, their main question was what is this for you guys, they would not believe that we worked for free and had no financial plans to benefit from a positive decision for shooters ?

Bananaman

Sparks,

You seem to be of the opinion that people have brought court cases to affect change.

I think you are wrong.

People brought court cases because they had no other recourse under the law if they wished to continue in their chosen aspects of the sport of target shooting.

If change is a by-product then fine but I do not think anyone who brought a case has much interest in that - unless they get their license back and can take part in it.

B'Man

Sparks

MortgageMan wrote: »

The team I worked with just wanted to make things better, not worse and frankly if after ten years of lobbying all you can say is read between the lines then something is seriously wrong here. I would have expected a better response from you.

It's not all we can say. We can (and I have) pointed out what we managed to avoid happening over those years. We can point out that ten years ago, the DoJ did not talk to us officially. At all. There was no formal contact. I distinctly remember being laughed at in one NTSA meeting because I suggested we try talking to them about a problem. Ten years on, we have a formal, recognised forum to talk to them, the AGS, the DoAST, and all the shooting NGBs are represented there and work together. That that massive an improvement can be swept aside as irrelevant by you doesn't say good things about your understanding of the situation.

When we met Crime 4 and Justice, their main question was what is this for you guys, they would not believe that we worked for free and had no financial plans to benefit from a positive decision for shooters ?

Yup, the first time we met the DoJ ten years ago, the same thing was said to us. They couldn't believe that the people meeting them were still active shooters. They couldn't believe that we were into it for the sport and not some other reason. It took time for them to accept the truth (and frankly, if you'd spent your working life working for our calibre of politician, I think it might take you some time to accept that about a stranger as well).
But the point is, they did accept it in the end.

Sparks

Bananaman wrote: »

Sparks,
You seem to be of the opinion that people have brought court cases to affect change.
I think you are wrong.

I think you are ignoring what people bringing those court cases said at the time. I was there, as were many others on here; you were not. Cases brought in the late 90s and early 00's were not bought for any other reason than effecting change in the law. We're not talking about DC appeals of firearms licences here, but the full-blown high court challanges like Dunne and like Frank Brophy's case.

MortgageMan

Sparks are you serious about your comments about Justice an Crime 4, you are more nieve than I thought :eek:

You attended the same seminar at my club that Crime 4, Justice inc Garrett Byrne did, and we all know what was done after that meeting even after the promises and comments that were made during and after it :eek:

Sparks

MortgageMan wrote: »

Sparks are you serious about your comments about Justice an Crime 4, you are more nieve than I thought :eek:
You attended the same seminar at my club that Crime 4, Justice inc Garrett Byrne did, and we all know what was done after that meeting even after the promises and comments that were made during and after it :eek:

Do you mean the first seminar, which happened a year before Deasy went off on the bandwagon? Because yes, I do know what happened afterwards. In detail. And not all the details made it into the public domain - the NASRPC's antics didn't crop up for several years for example.

MortgageMan

No Sparks, I am talking about the more recent one

Time to go back to real life, see you in two years time I don't have the time or inclination to do this dance again.

Rosahane

Sparks wrote: »

Er, no.
He's elected to represent the people living in his constituency. He is supposed to represent all the people in the State when appointed as a Minister. That (as everyone who's ever seen where funding goes) is something that rarely works like it's supposed to. End result - we claim he should favour our interests, ICABS says he should favour theirs, they have more PR than we do because all they ever do is PR (and 20 people doing PR all the time have more public opinion than 200,000 people who leave it all to two or three people to do PR every so often), and the end result is that we get shafted..

The fact that it rarely works like it should is what's wrong! Pandering to, and turning a blind eye to the actual law and constitution is why we have had, and are currently engaged in the High Court. This attitute is also, unfortunately the reason the country is in the state it's in. Pandering to the FF nod and wink strategy has to stop!

Sparks wrote: »

That's why the FCP was good - it meant that the DoJ knows us, face-to-face, knows that we're 200,000 people, not 20, and knows we're a lot more stable than the ICABS mob. .

I agree, but would contend that the facts show it hasn't actually done us much good

Sparks wrote: »

Nothing. He didn't need to know anything about it to ban it. And frankly, I don't think he had anything much against it either; he was concerned with looking bad in the media because he had no comeback to the ranting of Deasy and Mitchell and DeBurca and everyone else on that bandwagon. And we didn't have the PR presence to point out that they were all full of it. "The Minister says everything's grand" doesn't play well in the tabloids, so he figured he had to "look tough". Which is where the "Minister announces complete handgun ban" headlines came from - the fact is, they were accurate at the time and it took work to prevent it being a complete ban. .

So, who told him about evil bullput 22s and combat simulation IPSC?

Sparks wrote: »

Come off it Rosahane, if you could prove that we could stop it. You haven't a shred of evidence for it, just rumours from people who were promoting the FCP as the best thing ever right up until they weren't chosen to sit on it and who then spent months trying to sabotage it, and then those NGBs on it, and making all of us look like idiots at a critical time. .

I saw Ahern lying on the Dail floor, I saw Byrne handing him bits of paper. During this campaign I was not involved with anyone from an NGB or on or wishing to be on the FCP - just the people from my club who gave up a lot of time and expense in trying to fight the issue!
It subsequently became clear just how the FCP were operating and how some people were quislings :mad:

Sparks

MortgageMan wrote: »

No Sparks, I am talking about the more recent one

Ah, the one where instead of talking about the Range and Clubs SIs which were about to destroy all target shooting across the board, some folks took time to point out to the people in the room who really hated fullbore pistols (they were sitting behind you, not at the top table) that they'd be exempted from the ban if the ban was against any pistol that fitted into the ISSF measuring box.
That one?

Time to go back to real life, see you in two years time I don't have the time or inclination to do this dance again.

You and me both.

Sparks

Rosahane wrote: »

The fact that it rarely works like it should is what's wrong!

Yes, but we can't fix that except at constitutional level. Which is why it's great to see that talked about in the election recently, but I don't think we'll see it changed in the next ten years.

Pandering to, and turning a blind eye to the actual law and constitution is why we have had, and are currently engaged in the High Court. This attitute is also, unfortunately the reason the country is in the state it's in. Pandering to the FF nod and wink strategy has to stop!

It's not Pandering.
It's trying to pick a fight we can win, rather than letting ourselves pour all our time and money and resources into one avenue that has no hope of success - which a cynical mind would say is precisely what the Minister likes to see happen.

I agree, but would contend that the facts show it hasn't actually done us much good

I'd contend that you're not seeing all the facts if you believe that.
And that you're not seeing all the facts isn't an impossibility.

So, who told him about evil bullput 22s and combat simulation IPSC?

The AGS from what I can tell. Our ex/soon-to-be-ex-Commissioner was not a fan.

I saw Ahern lying on the Dail floor, I saw Byrne handing him bits of paper.

That is the job of a Prinicipal Officer in the Civil Service.
Look, if he did something underhanded, I'd say there's a point to argue there (and if he did, you'd have proof of it - every record in the DoJ is covered by the FOI Act). But doing the job he's paid to do and which the law demands of him - that's not a great basis for hating the guy and it makes us all look stupid. Hating Ahern, who didn't have to do what he did and who did it for personal political gain, yeah, I can see the logic in there (I even share it). But hating the civil service for a Minister's policy is like hating the 18-year-old on 20k a year at the teller's desk in AIB because the board made dodgy investment choices over the last decade.

Bananaman

Such innocence in one so young

B'Man

Rosahane

Sparks wrote: »

...That is the job of a Prinicipal Officer in the Civil Service.
Look, if he did something underhanded, I'd say there's a point to argue there (and if he did, you'd have proof of it - every record in the DoJ is covered by the FOI Act). But doing the job he's paid to do and which the law demands of him - that's not a great basis for hating the guy and it makes us all look stupid. Hating Ahern, who didn't have to do what he did and who did it for personal political gain, yeah, I can see the logic in there (I even share it). But hating the civil service for a Minister's policy is like hating the 18-year-old on 20k a year at the teller's desk in AIB because the board made dodgy investment choices over the last decade.

Thanks Sparks, Having been a senior public servant for many years I am somewhat aware of the role of a Principal Officer :rolleyes:

Also, I never said that I hated the guy, please do not publish your erreonous interpetation on my comments just because they do not agree with your perspective :mad:

I questioned the source, accuracy and truth of some of the information that the former Minister (who, incidentally I do hate, for many reasons) spoke and acted upon. I can only speculate at the the motivation for this!