In Reply to: re: re: re: but theres already a law against burgulary posted by Giant Haystacks on December 06, 2007 at 16:55:33:

I think you make my point. The total number of gun homicides in the whole of Ireland last year didn't come to 27, never mind one region of the country. Pretty much all of those were gang members killing other gang members in urban areas involved in drug-dealing turf wars.

Likewise with other homicides in Ireland last year(approx 30 for the country as a whole) most were family members killing each other - not marauding 'salespeople'.

I can't think of any isolated vulnerable rural person in Ireland who was killed by a stranger in the past year - past five years? Perhaps if someone Googles it up they will come up with a case or two per decade or two.

But it will be nothing compared with the number of women beaten by their spouses or men shot or stabbed by the women they were trying to beat to death. Or parents killing their children - many cases in the past few years. Or rural suicides - many many cases. OR compared with the number of isolated people who die of neglect because no one ever calls - found dead weeks after they draw their last breath.

There are of plenty of REAL problems that should be dealt with - usually not by legislation but by better social welfare and by looking out for people before they get beaten to death by their drunken spouses, before they go and tie the rope around their neck, before they run the car with the kids off the pier or set fire to the house, before they die of neglect in an isolated house where no one ever calls.

Of course introducing a law to forbid us from calling to strangers' doors to protect those calling from being murdered by the person with the shotgun answering the door. But one such case in the past 50 years or so? It doesn't sound like an emergency to me. In any case the law is already quite clear about the situation when a person actually breaches the perimeter of the house itself. No need for new legislation there.

The kind of social awareness schemes that just might help in preventing suicides, beatings and killing of children just very well might have assisted the man who cowered in his shed with a shotgun waiting to shoot another man in the back and club him to death.