Even minor criminals have easy access to firearms, writes Conor Lally
Guns being used in gangland murders and non-fatal attacks in Ireland are being acquired in a number of ways.
Some criminals specialise in hiring loaded weapons for a few hundred euro. If a gun is fired while out on hire, the cost increases. News of the hiring service spreads by word of mouth, making it relatively easy for even low-level criminals to get a weapon when they need it.
There has also been at least one case of British crime gang selling guns to drugs gangs here.
Gardaí believe many of the weapons that were in the hands of dissident republicans at the end of the Troubles have found their way into the Republic's underworld having been sold on.
They also believe some of the guns in circulation as hostilities in the Balkans came to an end in the late 1990s have found their way on to the Irish market.
In May 1997 gardaí found a cache hidden in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold's Cross, which included high-powered handguns and an east European copy of the American Ingram submachine gun. The Ingram has a 32-bullet magazine and a firing rate of more than 1,000 rounds a minute.
Last September, an Ingram was used in a drive-by shooting in Dublin during which 40 bullets were fired in seconds.
Irish gangs also acquire weapons from foreign drugs wholesalers from whom they buy large quantities of drugs.
Nine millimetre semi- automatic handguns are now very popular with criminals carrying out gangland murders and are being acquired from overseas, as outlined above. These guns are capable of firing up to 18 bullets in rapid succession with just one squeeze of the trigger.
A total of 4,400 firearms were seized between 1999 and 2004, according to Garda figures. The number seized has fluctuated between 700 and 800 a year. Some 822 were seized in 2004, the last year for which figures are available. Air guns, rifles and shotguns account for about 80 per cent of the firearms seized every year. Machine guns and pistols are becoming slightly more popular.
Many sawn-off shotguns now in circulation are being used by armed robbers rather than gangland murderers. A large number of these guns have been stolen from farms or arms dealers. Some 1,300 shotguns were stolen in Ireland in three years to the end of 2004.
Garda sources say while stolen shotguns are being used regularly in serious crime, it is handguns that are being used in most of the fatal gun attacks. Almost all of these are linked to the growing drugs trade.
Irish criminals have proven very adept at maintaining a regular flow of illicit drugs into the State despite the best efforts of the authorities. The value of drugs seized here reached about €100 million last year, a five- fold increase since the beginning of the decade.
In many cases, imported cocaine and heroin originate in Colombia and Afghanistan, with ecstasy and amphetamines coming from labs in the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium. Cannabis resin traditionally comes from the Indian sub- continent, Lebanon, Morocco and Asia. Herbal cannabis comes from North Africa.
In virtually all cases, drugs from outside the EU are delivered to middlemen in Spain and the Netherlands. It is from these middlemen, some of whom are Irish and who fled the Republic after Veronica Guerin's murder in 1996, that the Irish gangs buy their drugs.