– Life along the Slaney

Ah you can’t beat Wexford Fine Gael TD, Paul Kehoe for a bit of shooting-from-the-hip and telling-it-like-it-is. The man doesn’t dress things up and doesn’t feel the need to sugar coat his views even on the airwaves of South East Radio.

This morning [Wednesday, January 28] speaking on Alan Corcoran’s Morning Mix, the Fine Gael chief whip said that if he met an intruder coming up the stairs against him at 2 in the morning, he would have no hesitation in shooting the inturder…..though not in the head, only in the leg, knee or hip – which is nice of him.

Kehoe was speaking about the right to defend oneself and using ‘reasonable force’ in your own home. Kehoe went on to say that ‘people’ are genuinely afraid in Co. Wexford and there are many Padraig Nally’s in his own county.

Dead Eye Kehoe obviously sees himself as a shoot-from-the-hip type of guy who obviously sleeps with a .44 Magnum underneath his pillow at night. He isn’t going to let some burglar intimidate him or his family. His is going to meet force with force but won’t aim for the head of the guy preferring to impede his middle to upper leg area.

Paul Kehoe is an advocate of being able to protect yourself within your own four walls and this is an admirable view, however his idea of a gun-totting society raises some difficult issues.

Are we going to go down the America route and have guns in every home in the country? Will we see the staggering rise in gun related crime lead to the deaths of not just the gangsters and organised crime figures spread countrywide as more and more people invest in a gun as way of protection?

Then again if we are all as accurate as Dead Eye Kehoe, it will be only an increase in hip replacements and shattered knees we will have to deal with!