Dunblane school massacre legacy is ‘a safer Britain’

The father of one of the victims of the 1996 Dunblane school massacre has said it is harder for criminals in the UK to get guns, thanks to the legal clampdown that followed the tragedy.

Mick North, whose five-year-old daughter, Sophie, died in the shooting, said the tragedy steered Britain away from an attitude to guns that still prevails in the US.

Thomas Hamilton shot and killed 16 school children, and their teacher, at Dunblane primary on March 13, 1996. Political action had secured a ban on handguns by the following year.

Speaking to the Radio Times, campaigner Mr North said: “Are we, and our children, now safer from guns?

"The answer is a definite ‘yes’. Gun crime is significantly lower, gun murders are extremely rare, and criminals are finding it harder than ever to get guns.

“Compare the British situation with that in the US. Parallels are drawn between the shootings at Dunblane and Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Connecticut, in 2012.

“The horror at the mass killing of children and teachers, the sympathy for their families, were the same as we’d experienced.

"The legacy was not... in the US, too many politicians claim that everything but gun ownership is responsible”.