Madam, - Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern's decision to introduce a ban on handguns will do nothing to combat gun crime. Its only purpose is to show that the Minister is "doing something" about the issue. Legal handgun owners are a soft target. The Minister should be doing more to stop the inflow of illegal firearms. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - We're lucky Dermot Ahern is such a sharp thinker. All those drug lords and gangland killers must be quaking in their boots, waiting for their gun licences to expire. Then they'll have to toddle along to their friendly neighbourhood Garda station and hand them in.
Gosh, he's really trumped them! I'm sure they'd never dare to try get their hands on a handgun without a Garda vetting and a licence. After all, that'd be against the law. And anyway, where on earth would a drug lord get the money to buy illegal guns? - Yours, etc,
Madam, - As in Chicago in the 1920s, there is a serious problem in Ireland today over the use of guns by gangsters. The root causes of the two cases are very similar: the prohibition of alcohol in 1920s America, and the prohibition of drugs in Ireland today. Since prohibition means that the distribution of the prohibited substance is left to criminals, the latter get rich, powerful and out of control.
Rather than addressing the root of the problem by removing prohibition, the Government's solution is to take guns away from law-abiding people, the consequence of which is that now only gangsters will have guns.
Is there some logic to this that I'm missing? - Yours, etc,