My column in The Kerryman. 8 May, 2013
Deputy Michael Healy-Rae’s recent call for more liberal gun laws for rural dwellers made me think of the film, Braveheart. It’s about William Wallace’s war with the English King, Edward Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots. Edward never conquered Scotland, making the title Hammer of the Scots, undeserved. He did conquer Wales. Conquered it and pacified it so successfully, it never again seriously contested English rule.
Edward won by building castles. Each castle was built to support the other castles. Attack one and you’d soon have an army at your back. It was common to build forts in enemy lands, to keep a conquered people under the thumb. The Romans did it and all over Ireland there are Norman keeps and castles, built to suppress us natives.
The only thing that’s changed since, is the architecture and the distance between each fortification. Before the War of Independence, British rule in Ireland was maintained by a huge number of Royal Irish Constabulary barracks. Then of course, support arrived by bicycle, today it’s by car.
Edward built his castles big, not just for defence, but to remind everyone who was in charge. Our Garda Stations, aren’t big or impressive but they have the power to make people feel more secure. In sparsely populated areas of Kerry, among the elderly and those living alone, that feeling matters. Matters more than a money man in Dublin can ever know.
Great anxiety is being experienced in rural Ireland. The economy, emigration, the woes faced by farmers due to the awful weather, the silent agony of isolation and the growing perception that we are being increasingly victimised by organised gangs of criminals have led to feelings of abandonment and desperation.
So bad do people feel, the calls for more guns seems reasonable. I may be a soft liberal type, but I’ve no problem with the idea that a man forfeits his life if he comes into my house, my castle, uninvited. The problem is with the practicalities of this principle. Australia once had a very pronounced gun culture. In a country full of voracious wildlife and where the nearest police officer might be a plane ride away, having guns seemed perfectly sensible.
In the 90s however, they decided that they’d suffered one too many massacres, so they came down hard on gun ownership. There hasn’t been a massacre since. Gun homicides, accidental deaths and suicides have been reduced. If we invite more guns into rural Ireland, we can be certain that death will follow in their wake.
Guns are the wrong answer to the wrong question. All they’ll succeed in doing is creating a whole serious of little castles, defended by gun toting scared men. That is not security. That is the opposite of security.
But security we must have. Michael Healy-Rae understands this. I may disagree with his solution, but he knows a fear exists. Kerry has five other TDs and a few dozen councillors. Perhaps it’s time they all sat down together and listened.
Listened and reassured. Not all the fear being experienced is justified. Yet statistics are cold comfort to those living in fear in isolated parts of the county. Statistics are no comfort to those who become the statistics.
Nothing can breach the walls of a strong community. No threat nor disaster can bring those walls down, but our dozens of paid representatives need to be on the walls with us.
