If you watched The Dunblane Tapes on Channel 4 last month, you may feel you lack the emotional fortitude required to sit down in front of another documentary about the primary school shooting that traumatised a nation. Nobody would blame you. The events of March 1996, which resulted in the deaths of 16 children and one teacher, remain exceptionally difficult to contemplate – especially when recounted by parents who lost their sons and daughters that day. Thirty years on, the two local MPs who visited the scene remain unable to discuss it without breaking down in tears.
But if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth refreshing your memory – not least because the response to the crime goes some way to explaining why Britain is a relatively safe place today. Gun crime has never been rife in the UK, but we have still been scarred by a handful of mass shootings. One of these, the Hungerford massacre, took place in 1987, when a man murdered 16 people using legally owned semi-automatic rifles and a handgun. Such rifles were banned the following year, but handguns – deadly and easily concealable – remained legal. This was the weapon used to carry out the massacre in Dunblane, a picturesque Scottish town near Stirling.
