In reply to bleddynmawr:
Good question that!
Don't know the answer, but I had a mate who was a police officer in NI (so therefore had a gun), but lived over the border in the republic, where he's not allowed a gun, so he had to stop by the local Gardai station in the republic every night to drop it off and pick it up, right palaver!
Got sick of it in the end, became a Buddhist monk after that.