I as honorary secretary of Loughbrickland Small-bore Rifle and Pistol Club have been asked to write to your Committee to enquire into the proposals or recommendations that they may be considering in regards to the control of Firearms in Northern Ireland.

  We would hope that the Committee would be fully aware and acquainted with the very good record of all legally held firearms certificate holders in Northern Ireland. Even during the past years when Northern Ireland had serious civil unrest and numerous terrorist groups with illegal arms the number of incidents where there was any involvement with legally held Firearms has been recorded as virtually zero, certainly much less than the mainland or any other European country. This we feel is largely due to the very responsible attitude of all the licensed Firearms holders, and the thorough checks carried out by the RUC in the past, and hopefully by the PSNI in the future, so that we as individuals and also sporting clubs can continue to enjoy the security of having adequate controls, without any further repressive legislation being introduced.

  We are always happy to discuss ways of improving our chosen sport, and we hope that your Committee will see that recommending increased restrictions on legally licensed Firearms will do nothing to either make the public at large safer or reduce armed crime, where there is a ready supply of illegal weapons. The Firearms Act introduced after the horrendous happenings at Dunblane has since been seen as a complete overreaction and only penalised all the other law abiding people. The constabulary who issued the licence to the individual concerned, has since been seen not to have followed the correct and established procedure. If this had been done the terrible tragedy could have been avoided, maybe this is easy to say with hindsight, but the system we have in place here over a long number of years must indicate that, when there is proper control there is confidence for all concerned. We hope nothing will be done to undermine this.

28 April 2002