Mr. Mark Dennehy:

In 2004, I was the secretary of the National Target Shooting Association, NTSA. We met Department of Justice officials, because at that time they were starting to draft the firearms Bill 2004, which became the 2006 Act. One of the initial suggestions in the draft was to describe assault rifles as rifles that had a pistol grip and a collapsible stock. Every air rifle and small bore rifle used in the Olympics has a pistol grip and a stock which adjusts, which could be defined as collapsible, because every single human being has a different distance from where the stock goes on one's arm - for air rifles it goes on one's shoulder - to one's eye, which is doing the aim. It has to be adjustable because a person is paying €2,500 for a rifle and he or she will want it to fit. We talk about how we define these things in the Act, but this is the effect it has on sportspeople.

However, the Act is kind of odd in that it deals with two separate groups. There are two separate scenarios. On one hand, the Act deals with law-abiding people engaged in sports, hunting, veterinary practice, airport safety and so forth and it covers how these things are licensed. The assault rifle part deals with this. On the other hand, another section of the Act deals with every murderer, terrorist and drug dealer. This section deals with possessing firearms without licences and with intent to endanger life and so on. This has nothing to do with us. When we find the definition of assault rifle going into our section of the Act, we are confused. It is not, to our minds, a fantastic association to have.

In the scenario the Deputy described, where someone walks into a post office and points a gun at the poor woman behind the counter, under Irish law it does not matter if it is a gun. If I point a toy at someone behind the counter and say, "This is a robbery. Stick 'em up", I will go to jail for the same length of time as if I had used a loaded firearm. The law does not make a distinction between whether the firearm is real, loaded or anything else. It is an offence for a person to point something at another person which the second person thinks is a loaded firearm and the first person acts like it is. The person is going to jail for the same amount of time, regardless of what it is he or she is actually holding in his or her hands.

There is this idea that we are trying to get around things that would concern public safety. It is very difficult to explain how foreign a concept this is. Most of us here have children. If the Deputy wishes, after the meeting I can sit him down and show him photographs of the most beautiful child ever born in Irish history and quite happily bore him to death with it. I am very concerned about this child's public safety. He is a member of the public, as am I. When we start talking about that with this, it is a bit confusing, because there is nothing in this law which says that we are a separate group from the public. When we speak about the firearms licensing laws and the half of the Firearms Act that applies to us, it is really important to keep it distinct in our minds from the other half of the Firearms Act, which is about people none of us would like to be seen given the time of day and which most of us would like to see locked up for the rest of their lives. That is what the law applies to in most cases. There is a life sentence for half these things.