A judge has ordered the forfeiture of a .44 Magnum “Dirty Harry” handgun that was discovered in a Dublin postal depot after a shipping blunder.<\/p>\n
The revolver, which gained most of its fame from the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood, had been purchased by English antique dealer and huntsman Colin Brummitt.<\/p>\n
It was mailed from the United States, but a mix-up led to it being sent to Ireland.<\/p>\n
Officials seized it at the Dublin Parcel Hub, Centre Oak Road, Knockmitten, Dublin 12 last year. Revenue made an application before Dublin District Court today to have it forfeited.<\/p>\n
Mr Brummitt, of March Road, Turves, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, initially indicated he was going to challenge the civil proceedings in the hope that Judge Anthony Halpin would make his day.<\/p>\n
However, he withdrew his objection shortly before the hearing.<\/p>\n
On 13 February 2024, a customs and excise officer was on duty at Dublin Parcel Hub, Centre Oak Road, Knockmitten, Dublin 12, when a parcel dispatched from the US addressed to the respondent was X-rayed and found to contain the handgun.<\/p>\n
‘A very substantial firearm’<\/p>\n
Solicitor Kieran Binchy, who moved the application, told Judge Halpin that “the item in question in this case, and it’s worth setting it out briefly. It\u2019s a .44 Magnum, which I only know in my own capacity as being the gun that Dirty Harry uses in the Clint Eastwood film. It\u2019s a very substantial firearm”.<\/p>\n
“You\u2019ve clearly done your research,” Judge Halpin said, after querying whether the weapon was real or a replica.<\/p>\n
He was told the gun was genuine and had turned up in the Irish postal service to the surprise of everyone, including Mr Brummitt.<\/p>\n
Mr Binchy said the label stated it was going to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and it was mistakenly sent to Ireland.<\/p>\n
The solicitor said: “We have some of the strictest gun laws for historical reasons in this country, and they must be obeyed when the item enters this country.”<\/p>\n
He explained that it was designated an illegal firearm.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Brummitt wrote to the Revenue acknowledging that there were different laws in Ireland, although he believed it was legal in the UK.<\/p>\n
He had wanted to contest the case, but shortly before the hearing, he emailed to say: “He can see which way this is going and he is not going to turn up.”<\/p>\n
The court heard that he paid around \u00a3900, and Revenue gave it a value of \u20ac1,500.<\/p>\n
The application was made pursuant to Sections 19(4) and 20(2) of the Customs Act, 2015, which provide for the forfeiture and condemnation of the gun.<\/p>\n
The solicitor said a customs official was available to give more information about the legalities of the .44 Magnum.<\/p>\n
But Judge Halpin declined, saying, “Dirty Harry did it for me”, and he granted the order sought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge has ordered the forfeiture of a .44 Magnum “Dirty Harry” handgun that was discovered in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-41371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}