DUP leader Rev Ian Paisley carried a gun 'everywhere' until a year before his death
Former first minister and DUP leader Rev Ian Paisley carried a gun his entire life – and only surrendered it a year before he passed away, his son has revealed.
Ian Paisley Jnr made the revelations in a podcast with RTE’s Oliver Callan last week.
The former DUP leader passed away in 2014 aged 88 – and carried a Colt .45 “everywhere”, his son said.
Mr Paisley was reflecting on how “ghastly” the Troubles were and the need for personal protection weapons.
“My father carried one his whole life. He carried a legally held Colt .45.”
“Not only did he have a police guard, but he carried a personal weapon, he surrendered the weapon about a year before he passed away,” he said.
He added: “It gives you a great deal of respect for weapons, because we grew up in that atmosphere.”
He also noted their family home was “blown up” with a firebomb early in the Troubles and that his father was shot while in a car with his brother.
The former MP said he too suffered two attempts on his life.
He spoke of his pride in his children; one son is an airline pilot, a daughter is an end-of-life nurse, and another son is studying politics, philosophy and economics at university.
Speaking of losing the North Antrim seat in 2024 which he had held since 2010, he said: “In life, I think you've got to take these things that they're meant to be. And I think if you dwell on things and let them get on top of you, you become a very miserable, unhappy person.
“And I've always been, I think, very well adjusted and probably too happy for most people. And I always made sure that I had always other options. And politics was not my entire life, and should never be anyone's entire life.”
He had a new job offer within 72 hours of losing the seat, he said.
“Life is about relationships,” he said. “I think it's how you treat people, how you work with people, and how you build those relationships, and those things last and genuinely, within 72 hours, I had an offer to go and do something else very exciting, which I'm doing.
“My business has flourished since then, and I can only thank God for that. I do some consultancy work and some other advisory work for people, and I do a lot of stuff in the United States of America.”
He added: “As you know, probably, after 30 years in the public sector, I know my way around regulations quite well. I wrote quite a lot of them and was engaged in quite a lot of them. And regulations can sometimes get in the way of business.
“And helping businesses with regulations, understanding them, making sure that they perform to their maximum capacity whilst fulfilling their regulatory obligations – I am quite good at that.”
His business takes him to America once a month and he is also a visiting lecturer with a university in Virginia, where he speaks about the American special relationship with the UK, focusing on Northern Ireland and the peace process.
A history graduate of QUB and self-confessed history buff, he said that one of the projects he is working on is “dealing with a number of those very controversial aspects of our Irish history and trying to bring it alive”.