With about 700 hundred weapons handed into Garda stations around the country I view the gun amnesty which ran for the last two months as success in a number of ways. Firstly these lethal weapons are now out of circulation and that has to be welcomed. As a TD who lobbied the Minister for Justice to bring in the gun amnesty I would have been happy if only one deadly weapon has been taken out of circulation. Those who measure the results in mere numbers of weapons are taking a very narrow view of things.

Furthermore with the amnesty now ended tough new anti gun laws will come into force. Those now found in possession of firearms will pay a very serious price for their crimes. For a range of offences mandatory sentences of 5 and 10 years will be introduced. In addition new offences will be created, including sawing off the barrel of a shotgun. Sawing off the barrel of a shotgun gets a maximum jail sentence of 10 years and a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. I never saw the gun amnesty as an end in itself but it was an important first step. It has removed guns from circulation before they fell into the wrong hands ? now we are moving on to the next part of our crackdown which should see those who resort to violent crime removed from our communities through longer prison sentences.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Personal Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.