Once again, news from the US has provided a shocking reminder of the pain and devastation of losing a loved one in a shooting. Nothing can prepare you for how it feels to drop your child off at the school gates in the morning and never see them alive again. Twenty-six years ago, that’s what my family was forced to endure. My five-year-old daughter Sophie was one of the victims of the Dunblane primary school massacre on 13 March 1996.
Not for the first time, parallels are being drawn between what happened in a small Scottish town and what took place yesterday in another small town in the US. The horror of the events is the same, but while Dunblane was Britain’s only school shooting, the same cannot be said of the events at Robb elementary school in Uvalde. It was the latest in a litany of mass shootings in the US, often at schools.
After Dunblane, it was recognised by many in Britain, including the families of the victims, that the most significant factor in the tragedy had been the ease with which the perpetrator had accessed guns, in his case high-powered handguns. At the time, UK legislation allowed him to own these legally. The Dunblane families and others campaigned to have handguns banned and we didn’t allow ourselves to be distracted by those who said gun ownership was not the issue.
It should go without saying that no matter what other factors are involved, the only one common to all mass shootings is that the person responsible had a gun. Thanks to massive public support, which was channelled through the Dunblane families, other campaigners, the media and a significant number of politicians, the successive Conservative and Labour governments passed legislation in 1997 and introduced a ban on the private ownership of handguns. This was despite hostility from the gun lobby and many on the right, among them the current prime minister, who vigorously opposed any changes to gun laws.
The changes not only reduced the availability of a dangerous type of weapon but indicated the direction the UK wanted to take, one which minimised the use and availability of guns and always placed public safety at the top of the agenda. Since the late 1990s the levels of gun crime in Britain have fallen significantly, gun homicides are rare and there have been very few other multiple shootings.
At the time, many suggested we only campaigned as a way to deal with our loss, though it never felt cathartic back then. But we knew our voices would be heard because of what had happened to our children, and for me there was a responsibility to do whatever we could. I remain extremely proud of being part of something that achieved so much and made life safer for others.
The British experience proves that gun control does work, but this is a lesson Americans seem reluctant to learn. Whenever, in the years immediately after Dunblane, I was asked to comment about US school shootings, which were happening with increasing frequency, I naively expressed the opinion that as soon as Americans realised what had been achieved after our own school shooting there would be a rush to adopt similar measures. I couldn’t have been more wrong, and with gun laws becoming even more lax too many of their citizens continue to pay the price with their lives.
The figures are shocking. Deaths due to gun violence total more than 17,000 so far this year alone, thousands of them homicides (just four gun homicides have been reported in Great Britain in 2022). In 2020, 999 children under 11 were killed or injured in shootings in the US. Gun violence remains one of the major causes of death, indeed the leading one among the under-20s.
International comparisons show a correlation between a country’s level of gun ownership and the number of gun deaths. In the US a gun in the home makes it more, not less likely that a member of the household will be killed with one. The more guns, the more deaths. And so, if the US really wants to turn its thoughts, tears and prayers after each mass shooting into something positive, it has to deal with the easy availability of firearms.
Too many cling to the second amendment of the constitution and how it supposedly confers the right of everybody to own guns, an interpretation that many find questionable. Notwithstanding its precise interpretation, the founding fathers would surely be horrified that their 18th-century words are being used to justify arming teenagers with 21st-century weapons that have turned their own schools into battlegrounds and allow a teenager to treat himself to an 18th birthday present of guns, which he then uses to kill young children.
Following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida in 2018, I wrote a speech which included the following lines: “We’re always being told of America’s love affair with the gun, yet from over here it looks more like an abusive relationship, one that causes too much pain, misery and death. Seize the opportunity and change that relationship now, and allow your children to look towards a safer future.”
I am devastated that in the four years since then there has been very little sign that a nation that otherwise considers itself caring, cares enough about the consequences of this love affair. As always, many people are saying that things will change after the events in Uvalde. Let’s hope so, but past experience does not make me optimistic. The victims, and their families, of this and all the other shootings deserve so much better.
Mick North is founding member of Gun Control Network and the father of Sophie, one of the children killed at Dunblane primary school
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