This week our lead story sees Galway’s Mayor Padraig Conneely voice his concern at the sale of replica guns in Galway city. His concerns are well-placed. The guns, classified as toys, are amazingly realistic, and could easily be used to intimidate, or scare people.
They fire pellets, which can injure, but the law limits the power of the “toys” to one joule.
It must be noted that the owners of the shop are perfectly within their rights, and insist that even though they are not bound by law to do so, they do not and will not sell guns to persons under the age of 18. If there is a market for these guns, and it is legal, they are perfectly entitled to sell.
But why does such a market exist? We often sneer at the Americans’ love of firearms, but demographs of Ireland enjoy a similar and growing obsession.
A quick trawl through the Bebo pages of Galway teenagers last week revealed quite a number dressed as ‘ganstas’, posing amazingly, with firearms.
This obsession, popularised it must be said, not by our own criminals, but by in part an unholy combination of cynical marketers and ridiculous rappers, is rather appealing to quite a few.
Let’s be honest for a moment. Boys do like guns. Boys like the glamour associated with guns. And yes, boys want to shoot guns. But unlike the beastly criminal elements of this country we don’t want to shoot at other each. We don’t want weapons that can maim and kill, or replicas of those weapons, freely available to be sought after as fashion or ‘ego’ items. Or do we? While it remains important not to victimise the likes of sports shooters we do need to wake up to this country’s growing affection towards firearms at a time of great national outrage at one particular shooting.
