Well in fact alcohol being legal serves to push problem drinkers to the health service and not the prison service where you can obtain drugs just as easy..goes back to that quote of “if you cannot control illicit drugs in a maximum security prison how can you hope to control them in a free society”. Murderers are people who have ended someone else’s very existence, this existence is all we know & such a dire act is incomparable with some recreational drug use

More like if TV licence wasn’t mandatory our prisons would be less full!

& looking at countries with legal gun use compared to those heavily regulated illegal ones I have to say the death is a lot more prevalent in the legal places like America

Vote Left, gun use is pretty much legal across the globe with only a few countries banning it outright. Sure they’re regulated and each country has it’s own level of regulations (in some cases like America, variable regulations within one country) but gun use is legal across most countries. Therefore your comment doesn’t really make much sense.

If you’re trying to say that countries which have more restrictions are safer than ones with less, again that is not necessarily the case. Canada also has pretty open access to firearms and the death rate there is 2.2 per 100,000 while America is up there at about 10. Most European countries (which tend to be much more strict) are between 0.25 and 3 deaths per 100,000. It has more to do with culture surrounding guns rather than the laws in place.

POLITICS How Australia And Other Developed Nations Have Put A Stop To Gun Violence Walter Hickey Jan. 15, 2013, 8:07 PM 184,651 63 london uk britain U.K. protest police crowdThe debate over gun control in the United States doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Other countries all over the world play the same video games and have the same mental health problems as the United States, but manage to avoid a sky-high gun murder rate and frequent public shooting massacres. The differences are due, in part, to the way that the different countries regulate gun ownership. Here’s how several other prosperous nations deal with the issue: The United Kingdom In 2011, the U.K. had 0.07 gun homicides for every 100,000 people; the U.S., by contrast, had 3 gun homicides for every 100,000. In 2009 there were 138 gun deaths in the U.K, where there are 6.7 firearms for every 100 people. I think I’ll choose the UK as the better policy given they greatly regulate & restrict gun use/ownership

There is no legal right to possess arms in Canada. It takes sixty days to buy a gun there, and there is mandatory licensing for gun owners. Gun owners pursuing a license must have third-party references, take a safety training course and pass a background check with a focus on mental, criminal and addiction histories. Licensing agents are required to advise an applicant’s spouse or next-of-kin prior to granting a license, and licenses are denied to applicants with any past history of domestic violence. Buyers in private sales of weapons must pass official background checks. Canadian civilians aren’t allowed to possess automatic weapons, handguns with a barrel shorter than 10.5 cm or any modified handgun, rifle or shotgun. Most semi-automatic assault weapons are also banned. As a result of exemptions, several kinds of assault weapons are still legal in Canada, although this has been the source of some controversy.

Fact is Jason smart, strict and widespread regulation is the way to go and that’s what ireland has. Sure every policy has holes but let’s plug them rather than going down the American route of a gun in every home & a mass shooting every week

Farmers should be allowed guns to protect themselves.

If your property is so important to you that you’re prepared to shoot somebody rather and risk the consequences of that, rather than let them go and just sort it out with the insurance company later, you might be a little too materialistic.

I sympathise with farmers taking up arms to defend their livelihood indeed. That said the answer is not farmers locked in gun battles with criminal enterprise it’s increased gardai & gardai presence so that we get back to a situation where rural ireland isn’t living in fear.

Why farmers?

Neal, you have a right to protect yourself, you have also a right to protect your property, if you’re ever broken into hit first, na Gardaí will ask no questions, as to gun control, shot guns are necessary for controlling vermin, not curious it was discovered close to Tallagh!

“There is no legal right to possess arms in Canada”

So how exactly are there over 30,000 guns per 100,000 inhabitants in Canada if it is so restrictive and there is no legal right to possess arms? It helps not to copy-paste articles and instead actually read them to try and understand what they say.

Again, the law has absolutely nothing to do with the likelihood of mass shootings. As I said it is the culture surrounding firearms rather than the availability. Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Canada and Switzerland also have incredibly high gun ownership rates and yet suffer nowhere near the same number or severity of problems that America has.

Restrictive doesn’t automatically mean low numbers. That’s an assumption I’d recommend you don’t hold. Canada has a big rural population with many predators regularly coming onto ones property. Guns are necessary in Canada yet their heavy regulation & restrictions prevent the wrong people getting their hands on a gun. Heavy regulation in Germany Sweden and all the countries you named above. I’m not trying to restrict use of guns for practical purposes I’m trying to restrict the wrong people getting guns