Shotgun (courtesy agriland.ie)

According to wikipedia.org Irish law requires that a citizen must have “A good reason for wanting a firearm. Hunting and target shooting qualify as do certain other activities like humane dispatch of large animals. Personal protection does not qualify as a good reason.” Same goes — I mean doesn’t go for tooling-up to protect livestock and property. Huh. Check this out [via agriland.ie]. . .

Farmers in parts of rural Ireland are sleeping with loaded shotguns and it’s not a question of if they’ll be used it’s how soon, Clive Clarke, a Tipperary farmer has said.

Clarke, speaking on Newstalk radio, was burgled two nights ago making it the sixth time he’s been targeted.

“A group of men cut their way through the security fence into our farm and removed a tractor from where it’s parked in front of my shed.

“They burst open steel doors and proceeded then to steal a quad, trailers and other equipmentfrom the shed.”

Clarke said that not alone did they do that but they broke into his butchers business on the same night . . .

“There’s licensed firearms holders patrolling areas of the countryside at night because they’re in such fear.”

B-b-but what about the police?

The Tipperary farmer said that the Gardai are excellent, but the laws are not in place to let the Gardai do their job properly.

“If the Gardai suspect somebody, they have to have an air-tight case to be able to obtain a search warrant.

“We’re trying to farm with the threat every day of the environmental people, the Department of Agriculture…every one of them can walk into our farm at any time to do any inspection.

“So not alone are they coming at night to rob you they’re coming during the day with a shirt and tie.”

Stifling bureaucracy and a lack of police protection in a country with draconian gun control? Who’d a thunk it? Equally, how long before the Gardai visit Mr. Clarke and his armed friends to confiscate their guns?

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46 COMMENTS

  1. They fought the English for nigh on eight centuries. I don’t reckon homegrown oppressors will have much better luck.

    • They’ve allowed themselves to be almost completely disarmed, and abandoned their rights. Doesn’t sound like they’re fighting very hard.

      • It’s actually a pretty common pattern in newly-indipendent countries: “We fought the oppressor with an armed insurrection. Let’s disarm everyone, lest we be fought by an armed insurrection.”
        The USA are a bizarre exception to this.

  2. The Gardai may well be related to these farmers, these are small town country folk mostly I think. With a little Irish luck there may be a bit of looking the other way. Until some burglar receives some beads of justice from a fowling piece.

  3. Whats the problem. You have guns, a butcher shop, and a farm with pigs.

    Worst case scenario, a missing persons report, and nobody is the wiser.

  4. Laws that require a valid reason to own a gun and don’t count personal protection as a valid reason seem to have priorities waaaay off.

    Want to shoot targets for fun? Fine fine?

    Want to shoot animals for fun and food? Fine.

    (And in some countries) you want to protect the lives of your chickens from foxes? Fine.

    What? You want to protect your life and your family’s life? No way!

    I see some strange priorities there.

    • No, not strange priorities. Deliberate, intentional priorities, and deliberate, intentional signaling of what’s what.

      Your right to your life is not for you to protect (or allow, even.) These other things are hobbies and preferences. Once we let you exist, you may choose, on the margins to do this or that, and we may choose to let you. The fundamental, whether you get to exist and do anything at all is for us to decide.

      So our Irish farming friends are being treated like livestock in turn.

      • Bottom line, *everyone* who bypasses the state apparatus to do something for himself is a criminal. Socialism is the primrose path to totalitarianism.

      • And that, dear friends, is the distinction between a sovereign state and sovereign citizens, in a nutshell. Subjects enjoy privileges, while citizens enjoy rights.

    • Always good to know exactly where on the food chain you actually are. Somehow I find “Below the chickens” to be less than satisfactory.

    • It’s a compromise by the ban-everything people. Because you don’t ‘need’ a semi-auto rifle for hunting, an over shotgun will do. If they admitted that personal protection was a valid reason they’d have to admit there’s a valid reason for handguns and modern long guns.

  7. Erin go bra-less, who gives the fat arse of rat? We’ve shown them for 230+ years that they don’t need to kneel before their a-hole neighbors needing jobs [a/k/a their gov’t]. We’ll save them with thermobaric bombardment after the N. Korean sub shows up there with a free shipment of evil POS ISIS.

    OKLAHOMA HOUSE VOTES 73-15 FOR O P E N CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY ! ! ! (still a couple a broke (D) and broke (D)vag here) but likely to pass the Senate and on to Ms. Gov.

    • Would be nice if Texas could swing that. The police unions out here would throw everything at it to make it stop from happening.

  8. Why does it only take two generations to forget the lessons of our ancestors? God help the Irish.

  9. Why does it take the Irish two generations to forget the lessons of their ancestors?

    Once upon a time the English ruled Ireland, then it became too expensive for them to maintain their rule.

    The would have you believe it was all nice-nice talk that got them their independence, but it was the use of arms that got to that talk, like it or not.

  10. What, people are actually using firearms for protection even when the law forbids it? Balder dash, shear balder dash.

  11. I wish my Irish distant brethren well in this fight against “the Left” hopefully they’ll be as stubborn and successful as my Polack brethren are right now in the fight against the EU’s repeated attempts to “Islamocize” Poland.

    Remember ONLY President-elect Donald J. Trump had promised to expand the 2nd Amendment and institute “National Concealed Carry” for ALL law-abiding Americans. Maybe “The Donald” will be gracious enough to tap Ted Cruz to sheperd the legislation through the House and Senate in order to revive his career.

    Note: You are probably asking “why?” I’m referring to Donald J. Trump as the “President-elect”. It’s because after what occurred last night at his rally in Chicago and today in Dayton “the Left” has lost. Trump’s victory in November is guaranteed, it’s be a “Nixonian” landslide and unlike Nixon Trump won’t have had an election stolen from him like JFK did to Richard Millhouse in 1960 thus there will be NO “Watergate” to derail his tenure.

    As President-elect Donald J. Trump said today in Dayton Ohio “It’s payback time!”

    N

    • It’s because after what occurred last night at his rally in Chicago and today in Dayton “the Left” has lost.
      I thought it was sort of a watershed event as well. The liberals have inadvertently admitted defeat. The DC voting was an admission by the RINOs that their establishment candidates cannot cut the mustard as well.

  12. “(H)ow long before the Gardai visit Mr. Clarke and his armed friends to confiscate their guns?”

    Too soon.

  14. I am glad my Irish ancestors were FROM Ireland.
    This is what happens when guns and laws must pass the sporting purpose test.

  17. Personal protection is the single first use for firearms…..every judge and every lawyer I know who own arms admit this, very trooper and every policeman we interviewed while I was military police…..said the same thing! My weapons are my wildlife protectors……but heaven help us if war breaks out……trust me it is not pretty…..good luck and peace to all of you…..even those who do not deserve it……truth to disarm people is in itself an act of SUPREME aggression……do not try this in the USA or Ireland two,years from now…..times they are a changing!!!

  18. I guess that’s the difference between Ireland and the USA. None of the farmers I know would wait until the sixth theft to finally break out the shotgun.

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