Airsoft Hysteria: Ireland

Apparently in Ireland people can’t stand that a shop has opened up which sells airsoft guns, presumably because if it looks like a gun, it must be bad.

A shop selling realistic imitation guns ranging from assault rifles to pistols has opened in Co Wicklow despite local concerns about the growing levels of gun crime.

They do say later in the article that the guns available in the shop are airsoft guns, so they do try (sort of) to clarify that the shop isn’t actually selling “assault rifles”, but still.

Now, this made seem odd in light of the post right under this, but the difference between the posts is that I don’t have a problem with people playing airsoft, but I want it done safely.   I think the kind of hysteria that you’re seeing over a shop that sells airsoft is just ludicrous.

The problem here isn’t the guns, it’s well, it’s the problem with Great Britian at large; there’s no longer any interest in dealing with criminals, they’d rather just slap them on the wrist and “rehabilitate” people than actually take measures to reduce crime.  And of course, because the people seem to have lost the spirit that they were famous for, they’re all on board for this.

4 Comments

  1. technically airsoft Are “Assault Weapons” because they DO look like military weapons.

    What they shoot and how they shoot it is irrelevent to the Antis

  2. I hate to go all anal retentive on ya, but Ireland ain’t Great Britain. Sovereign nation and all that, even if it is in the British Isles.

    But I think the Irish government’s position on guns is substantively indistinguishable from the UK’s, so your point still stands.

  3. You are correct in that, for some reason when I was typing this I was thinking Scotland and not Ireland. Eh, same difference anymore with respect to gun laws.

  4. BTW, Scotland wants to use their post-devolution, increased local autonomy to TIGHTEN the restrictions further than even London is willing to go, banning air rifles altogether after a freak accident got an infant killed.

    I was going to point out Eire is not in the UK but someone beat me to it.

    One of the nurses where I used to work in Houston, TX once messed that distinction up speaking to a Irish doctor by phone and he said “That would be like me calling you a Mexican”.

    Slightly OT, but I had a German friend once who was VERY pro 2A and disliked his home country’s strict gun laws. He had an SKS he was very fond of, and a compact GLOCK, which he wished he could carry with him back in Berlin on the off chance he ran into a gang of skinheads in the wrong part of town.

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