By Mick North, Photo: Nuri Vallbona/Reuters, The Guardian, May 26, 2022
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.
Comments (0)