Sinn Fein's Mr Martin McGuinness recently raised the matter of legal firearms, most of which are said to be in the hands of the unionist community. Mr McGuinness, like other Sinn Fein politicians, Irish governments and SDLP politicians before him, said this was another vital area where there must be decommissioning. The modern version of the pike in the thatch has both legal and illegal connotations, he believed.
Sinn Fein was sending the signal that if the North gets to the stage where paramilitary guns are being decommissioned, then there must be a reciprocal decommissioning of legal firearms.
As all politicians acknowledge, there is a lot of mutual distrust in the community, Belfast Agreement or no Belfast Agreement. Deep in the unionist and loyalist psyche there is a fear of Armageddon, the day when the British pull out and nationalists, in co-operation with the Republic, rise up against them. That will be the day, according to this scenario, when unionists will resist with a legal weaponry of about 139,000 arms, not to mention the vast illegal loyalist arsenals.
Unionists remember the early days of the Troubles, and the Arms Crisis, and Jack Lynch and his talk that he would not "stand by".
Deep in the nationalist and republican psyche there's a parallel fear that given the opportunity loyalists and unionists with their handguns, shotguns, and .22 rifles in co-operation with the RUC and Royal Irish Regiment will turn on them, when nationalists are at their most vulnerable. For many that will be when the IRA has handed over all its weapons.
Nationalists too remember 1969, and the pogroms, and the implication of some RUC officers and B Specials in loyalist attacks on pretty-well defenceless nationalist areas in Belfast, and the talk of the North unilaterally declaring independence. At the moment there are 138,727 legally-held firearms in the North. These include approximately 111,014 shotguns and airguns, 13,736 small bore rifles, 326 full bore rifles, 12,771 handguns and 880 miscellaneous firearms. Of the handguns, 9,800 are personal protection weapons, while the remainder are target pistols.
There are 52 authorised firearms clubs and 160 firearms dealers in Northern Ireland. The number of protection arms does not include personal weapons the 12,500 RUC officers carry.
There has been a fairly marked increase in the number of licensed weapons in the North since 1969. In 1973, the number of such guns was 105,000. By 1981 it had risen by about 5,000. In 1995 there was a sharp increase to 134,000 weapons. Now it stands at almost 139,000.
Unionist and some British politicians have argued that for an agricultural country such as Northern Ireland this is a perfectly reasonable total of firearms. Mr Alex Attwood, an SDLP Assembly member for West Belfast who has taken an interest in the issue, responds if there was a fair distribution of that weaponry then that argument would be more sustainable.
"My strong sense, and I think the empirical evidence backs this up, is that most of the legal guns are in Protestant or unionist hands rather than in Catholic or nationalists hands," he said.
Moreover, the number of weapons in the North is disproportionately high when compared with the Republic, which has a total of 202,000 legally held weapons. This is just over 60,000 more firearms than in Northern Ireland, despite the fact that the Republic's population is more than twice that of the North. Handguns are banned in the South.
The contrast with Scotland is even starker where, with a population of 5.12 million, the total number of legal firearms is around 100,000.
There is also some difficulty with the agricultural argument in that there are only 32,000 farmers in the North which, even allowing for some farmers having more than one weapon, still leaves about 100,000 legally held firearms in the hands of other sectors of the Northern population. "They can't all be for shooting rabbits," as one Sinn Fein official said.
The deep-seated Doomsday fears of nationalists and unionists surface at times of great sectarian tension in Northern Ireland. In the terrible early days of the Troubles the Irish government exercised great pressure on the British government to restrict the number of legally held guns.
The Tory government in 1973 was rather dismissive of these calls. At the time there were 105,000 legal guns in Northern Ireland, a figure that the then Northern Secretary, Mr William Whitelaw, considered reasonable. He and unionist politicians of the time laid emphasis on the fact that paramilitary shootings were being carried out almost invariably with illegal weaponry, not legal guns.
This, nationalists contended, was to miss the point. In a time of great civil strife the guns would be in the hands of ordinary unionists while ordinary nationalists would be unarmed. Better to place restrictions on the issue of such weapons in the first place.
The government also pointed out at the time that while some new restrictions were enacted the number of licensed guns still increased. Since 1970 no new gun clubs were allowed, but between 1969 and 1970 what was described as a "spate" of clubs was established, mainly after the disbandment of the B Specials.
This wasn't mere coincidence, nationalists argued. In 1971 requests from the Catholic Ex-Servicemen's Association for permission to form clubs were turned down. Nationalists complained this was further evidence of official bias in the awarding of licences.
Mr Attwood said the issue of legal weapons must be addressed. "We need to have a numerical balance with other jurisdictions so that the fears about licensed weapons can be alleviated."
Acknowledging that there was a residual Doomsday community anxiety in Northern Ireland - notwithstanding the hopes raised by the Belfast Agreement - he said some of these fears "were real and some were imagined". But they had to be addressed.
The North's Security Minister, Mr Adam Ingram, reported last June that while changes in firearms legislation after the Dunblane massacre did not apply to Northern Ireland there was a more "rigorous" licensing system in the North whereby all categories of guns must have certificates issued by the RUC Chief Constable.
The British government is considering some reform of the gun laws. In April, the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, published a consultation paper seeking views on how existing legislation might be altered.
In the coming weeks and months, as the illegal weaponry argument rumbles on, Dublin, the SDLP and Sinn Fein overtly, or behind the scenes, will bring further pressure on the British government to impose restrictions on the issuing of firearms licences.