The Firearms Act, 1925 also lists a number of groups which are prohibited from legally owning a firearm, these include those suffering from mental health issues, those under the age of fifteen years and those who are under the supervision of the police[1] Gun crime is rising steadily in Ireland as a result of the illicit drugs trade; this has resulted in extensive tightening of licensing legislation during the last decade over the protests of the shooting sports organisations.
With the exception of the recent rise in gun crime, politics in Ireland has not concerned itself very much with firearms since the Good Friday Agreement.
This created the unusual situation where the laws applying to everything from a Nerf dart gun to a 20mm anti-tank rifle were identical.
It must also be borne in mind that the licensing person, whether that is the local Superintendent or the local Chief Superintendent, have significant powers in law with regard to licensing decisions and may impose preconditions he or she requires of an applicant before granting a licence so long as such preconditions are imposed on a case-by-case basis (blanket preconditions having been deemed beyond the legal authority of the licensing person by the Supreme Court.
Prior to the computerisation of records in 2003,[8] it would have required searching and comparing through over 220,000 paper records by hand to determine this figure; requests for this number made through Written Questions in the Dáil since 2003 have received the reply that it would take a disproportionate amount of manpower to discover the number[9]).
How much of this is due to the overly complicated nature of the legislation involved and the lack of formal training provided to Garda Superintendents in that legislation is unknown, but all of the cases which have been brought to court to date hinged on misinterpretations of the firearms act by one party or the other, and in one such case – McCarron-v-Kearney, the presiding judge stated I feel it necessary to add, however, that the piecemeal spreading over multiple pieces of legislation of the statutory rules for the control of firearms is undesirable.
Over 168 judicial review cases were taken to the High Court between 2010 and 2013 in a protracted series of legal proceedings all relating to disputed licensing decisions.
The Troubles in Northern Ireland (1970–1998) were becoming a security concern for the Irish government at the time, and in 1972 a Temporary Custody Order (S.I.
187/1972 – Firearms (Temporary Custody) Order, 1972)[24] was issued for all privately held pistols and all rifles over .22 calibre to be surrendered to local Garda Síochána (police) stations by 5 August 1972, for a period of one month.
This situation continued until the late 1990s, when fullbore rifles of calibres up to .270 Winchester were permitted to be licensed for the purposes of deer hunting on humane grounds (prior to this, only the .22–250 cartridge was available for deer hunting and it was felt to be only barely capable of this task).
All other firearms held in custody remained there, until the repeal of the Garda policy following a high court case in 2004 taken by Irish shooter Frank Brophy to obtain a licence for an Olympic target shooting pistol[25] succeeded and the licence was granted.
While welcomed by the target shooting community, in 2008 opposition deputies Jim Deasy and Olivia Mitchell campaigned to ban these pistols on the grounds that they could be used in crime.
Despite multiple parliamentary questions from as early as 2005,[26][27][28][29][30] where it was stated that there was no proof that this was happening, Minister Ahern announced a ban[dubious – discuss] on all handguns in November 2008.
With the election of a new Minister, the FCP is in the process of being wound down, despite campaigning to extend its terms of reference to make it a permanent advisory panel.