NI politicians all say they want to take the guns out of politics. The UVF was founded as a private army by some loyalist bigshots to defy the implementation of Home Rule, an Act of the British parliament. The IRA was founded by a group of nationalist extremists to counter the effect of the UVF on British opinion. Both organisations gained popular support by reason of the moral vacuum left by the politicians who could not (or would not) give a sustained, reasoned response to the fears of one side of being swamped in a Catholic,largely peasant society (loyalist/Protestants)or, on the other side, of forever being regarded as second-class citizens in their own country (nationalist/Catholics). The partition of 1921 was a flawed solution to the impasse as it gave too much power to Unionists at that time, just as a fully united Ireland could never have achieved the acceptance of loyalists at that time. We will never know now the possible response of Irish people to such proposals as a federated or confederated system of government in Ireland or even across the UK, but it is certain that extreme republicanism became the nationalist response by default rather than any mass conversion to radical political ideology of nationalists. Even now a generous admission of past failures to deal fairly with the legitimate aspirations of the Irish for their autonomy within the larger entity such as was allowed to the 'dominions', Canada, Australia and New Zealand not very much later, would probably be a dam breaker in negotiations and a voluntary re-association with the Commonwealth of Nations would signal to the world that Ireland no longer views Britain as its natural enemy. This could make acceptable the re-establishment of the police force and the final disarming of the IRA. These are the two primal forces that keep Ulster in thrall.