As mentioned here before (and in several other places and discussed extensively over on boards.ie), the Minister for Justice announced last November that all handguns were to be banned with exceptions made for olympic-style pistols.
Thing is, ‘olympic-style’ is vague. Did he mean ISSF pistols? Or did he mean those ISSF pistols used on the Olympic programme?
We’d best hope for the former. Otherwise the new ISSF 5-shot air pistol events, which finally made it into the rulebooks on Jan 1 this year after several years of trials and tuning, will be impossible to train for here because they’re not on the Olympic programme. And neither will we be able to train for the centrefire ISSF pistol events using pistols like these:
That’s the latest Matchguns MG4 .32 calibre ISSF pistol,going on display at the IWA show over in Germany tomorrow. (I don’t normally think too much about the form of the firearms we use, the function is too critical, but you have to admit that it’s a magnificently ugly beast of a thing).
And it possible won’t be licenceable in Ireland in a few months. Which is immensely sad and silly at the same time, because I would be perfectly able to licence it’s uglier .22lr cousin:
And I can’t see why one is so heinous it must be banned but the other is a poster boy for sportsmanship and responsibility…