Any chance of lighter gun laws in the future?

rowa

Sparks wrote: »

...btw, can anyone see a shooting-related topic from here?

I'll jump at it, after spending so much time , (tax payers) money and effort getting rid of centrefire pistols then i don't see them allowing them back out anytime soon. The only other problems i see is things like no licencing of muzzleloaders and bp firearms, and needing a full firearms cert for relatively low powered airguns.

hurlsey

Could somebody, if they had enough money, take a test case to licence a centrefire pistol? I mean its a bit of a ridiculous law to say oh you had it before that date so your alright but everyone else cant!! Surely there is something inherently illegal in that itself?

IRLConor

hurlsey wrote: »

Could somebody, if they had enough money, take a test case to licence a centrefire pistol? I mean its a bit of a ridiculous law to say oh you had it before that date so your alright but everyone else cant!! Surely there is something inherently illegal in that itself?

The most likely outcomes of such a case are:

1. The government would simply ban centrefire pistols outright.
2. A bunch of lawyers get richer.

hurlsey

But how could they justify banning them altogther if they are saying that they are acceptable to own in the first place, but have decided they don't want anybody buying anymore? If they are licenceable buy those who owned them before a certain date then they are acceptable firearms, it seems to me to be a ludricous law, although i see what they are doing eventually nobody will own cf pistols,as those who once owned them will have died, and then they arn't restricted anymore....... they essentially become banned!!

IRLConor

hurlsey wrote: »

But how could they justify banning them altogther

The government are under no obligation to justify anything.

It wasn't me!

They don't have to justify banning them (and in the court of public opinion, it's never going to be an unpopular move to restrict or ban firearms ownership which you've spent years conflating with gun crime anyway), they just have to do it.

hurlsey

IRLConor wrote: »

The government are under no obligation to justify anything.

Well, this is going off topic just like the other thread, but i would say that is a fairly ridiculous statement, of course they should have an obligation to justify their actions, they are our elected representatives, just because they dont justify themselves to us does not mean they should not!!

Sparks

Also, at the moment what's banned is restricted short firearms.
Change what meets that definition and you can have centerfire pistols again.
To change that definition, you need an SI, a pen, and a willing Minister.
Note that you do not require a bill, several trips through the AG's office, Dail and Seanad with every back-bench nobody looking to get their name in the paper by opposing "a bill that promotes gun crime" (the fact that allowing centerfire pistols to be licenced wouldn't increase gun crime is the truth, and when have you last heard of a TD or an Irish newspapers that allowed the truth to get in the way of a good story?)


Short version - take a court case, piss off the Minister, lose any hope of getting centerfire pistols back.


Shorter version which you might have heard before - You can't use the courts as a stick to beat the legislative branch with.

IRLConor

hurlsey wrote: »

Well, this is going off topic just like the other thread, but i would say that is a fairly ridiculous statement, of course they should have an obligation to justify their actions, they are our elected representatives, just because they dont justify themselves to us does not mean they should not!!

They should have an obligation to justify their actions. That much I agree with.

In the matter of firearms legislation, no body of people with any political clout will ever call them on any decision to ban firearms so hence they de facto have no obligation to justify their actions.

Sparks

hurlsey wrote: »

of course they should have an obligation

They also shouldn't be Minister for Finance without qualifications in economics, they shouldn't lie about those qualifications, and they shouldn't run a national economy into the ground so spectacularly that we have had the worst banking crisis in recorded history anywhere, and they shouldn't have left us paying more than any other EU nation did per capita in the "recovery" (which I'm sure will kick in any day now, just as soon as the current recession goes away...)



"Shouldn't" is a word that doesn't really count for much in Ireland...

rowa

Sparks wrote: »

Also, at the moment what's banned is restricted short firearms.
Change what meets that definition and you can have centerfire pistols again.
To change that definition, you need an SI, a pen, and a willing Minister.
Note that you do not require a bill, several trips through the AG's office, Dail and Seanad with every back-bench nobody looking to get their name in the paper by opposing "a bill that promotes gun crime" (the fact that allowing centerfire pistols to be licenced wouldn't increase gun crime is the truth, and when have you last heard of a TD or an Irish newspapers that allowed the truth to get in the way of a good story?)


Short version - take a court case, piss off the Minister, lose any hope of getting centerfire pistols back.


Shorter version which you might have heard before - You can't use the courts as a stick to beat the legislative branch with.

Doesn't certain issf pistol competitions have to use a .32 centrefire ?Could be a foot in the door.

Sparks

rowa wrote: »

Doesn't certain issf pistol competitions have to use a .32 centrefire ?Could be a foot in the door.

Everything up to .38 calibre.
And it was a foot in the door...
...and then someone took that foot and wedged it securely in their mouth.

And so long as the FCP is disbanded and the toys are out of the pram, I don't see this changing. But on the other hand, if reason ever prevailed, we wouldn't have to fight past the Healy-Raes to get the change passed. It's not as much as we want, but it's not peanuts either.

EWQuinn

IRLConor wrote: »

The point I was (unsuccessfully) trying to make is that as someone who doesn't think that there's anything inherently wrong with uneven distributions of wealth shown in Sparks's graph I am still often considered a socialist in the US just because I think universal healthcare is a good idea. The fact that most US people I've met can't tell the difference between European-style social democrats and actual Marx-had-a-lot-of-good-ideas socialists tells me that they do have a very poor understanding of what socialism is.

I for one would have to know a person pretty well before I could label them a socialist, or lable them anything.

You make a reasonable / arguable point regarding social democracy vs socialism. The informed voters I know are more sophisticated than they are given credit and understand pretty well the various shades. There are cultural & demographic differences that must be accounted for, part of the reason one nationality cannot pronounce broadly what is good for another.

Universal health care is a very worthwhile goal that I too support, but the so called Affordable Care Act is sheer incompetence as we are about to discover by empirical results. There is also a failure to allow for conscience that is a fundamental flaw that will help to undermine it.

The reason this relates to gun legislation and regulation is that government should be about protecting the rights and freedom of the people, not finding ways to impose draconian arbitrary restrictions and mandates based on emotion, predjudice, and extreme cases. That is a challenge we all face in common at different levels.

Grizzly 45

hurlsey wrote: »

Well, this is going off topic just like the other thread, but i would say that is a fairly ridiculous statement, of course they should have an obligation to justify their actions, they are our elected representatives, just because they dont justify themselves to us does not mean they should not!!

When has a Govt anywhere,especially an Irish govt EVER felt the need to justify itself to the people ?For anything?:rolleyes:

hurlsey

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

When has a Govt anywhere,especially an Irish govt EVER felt the need to justify itself to the people ?For anything?:rolleyes:

Im not saying they did, do or ever will do, but that isnt to say they shouldn't Grizz!!

I understand how we ended up where we are now, people who owned pistols took care of them and theirs, after all they had licenced pistols and were given a clause to relicence them
The government looked good by saying that they had put a dent in handgun crime in Ireland, all without facts figures or evidence to suggest that the scrotes carrying out these hits were licencing pistols to use for the purpose rather than selecting one of the many guns that come in as part of a drugs shipment...... never let the truth get in the way of a good headline!!!

I had great interest in pistol shooting before this all happened, but alas it will never be, yes I'm aware .22lr pistol are perfectly licenceable however i have now interest in smallbore pistols!!

Im aware that all shooting bodies are only ever going to look after their own interests, however this is inherently flawed as i fear that eventually shooting sports will be eroded to nothing over the coming decades in Ireland!! I think a National Shooting Association to lobby on behalf of all shooting bodies and their interests would better serve us than the multiple bodies there now, however i think for that to happen many rattles would be thrown from many prams before it even got off the ground!!