Grim's Hall

Close, but not quite:

This letter to the editor in the NY Times today is on IRA disarmament:

Sir John Stevens's report that the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary colluded with Protestant paramilitaries to kill Catholics in Northern Ireland in the late 1980's confirms what many observers have suspected for some time.

Can there be any wonder that the Irish Republican Army is reluctant to give up all its arms?

The I.R.A. has sustained its cease-fire since 1996, but clearly, it feels that it and the Catholic community would be vulnerable to more attacks if the I.R.A. disarmed unilaterally.

The Good Friday Agreement calls for the general demilitarization of Northern Ireland, so the onus of disarmament should not fall on the I.R.A. alone.

All paramilitary groups in the province should disarm simultaneously, the British Army should withdraw, and the Northern Ireland police must be reformed so that the Catholic minority can trust them.
T. W. HEYCK

The IRA keeping its guns until the Protestants give up theirs is not the answer; and it certainly isn't the answer for the IRA to hang onto an arsenal until the British military withdraws. What do cached guns do for Catholics--even IRA members--that the Ulster paramilitary men want to kill, with or without British help?

The IRA should disband, but their guns should be divided among the Catholic population. The people of Ireland, and Northern Ireland, ought to enjoy a free man's right to self defense and the bearing of arms. It isn't through threats of future IRA reprisals that the power of terror can be broken. It's by the certainty of law-abiding self defense. Denying that right to the peoples of Ireland, Protestant and Catholic, prolongs the conflict and keeps the illegal armies ensconced in the shadows of power.