A dark day for the nation... but lessons have been learned

TWO years ago, while on an academic scholarship in New York, I met a couple named Teresa Rousseau and Bill Leukhardt. Their daughter, Lauren, had been a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut when, on the morning of December 14, 2012, a 20-year- old man armed with an M 4 semi-automatic rifle walked into her school and shot dead 20 children and six adults, including Lauren. While high school shootings have become terrifyingly commonplace in the US, the age of the pupils killed at Sandy Hook shocked America. They were all between six and seven years old, tiny children in duffle coats and wellies whose lives had barely started.

In Scotland, we need not imagine such horror. On March 13, 1996, 16 Primary One pupils and their teacher were murdered during gym class at Dunblane Primary school in this country’s worst mass shooting.

As we approach the 20th anniversary of Dunblane, I am reminded of how much has changed in Scotland since then.

Thanks to the Cullen Inquiry and the Snowdrop Petition, we now have a complete ban on handguns, and security from intruders in schools has vastly improved.

In America, things have got worse since the Sandy Hook massacre. In 2015, there were 330 mass shootings – almost one for every day of the year.

Teresa and Bill have learned to live with their grief. Journalists themselves (Bill was originally called to the scene to cover the shooting as a reporter, before discovering that Lauren was involved) they have campaigned for tighter gun controls and lobbied politicians.

They ask those they meet to remember Lauren, and to tell her story.

I will always remember Lauren, and the haunted faces of her parents. And on the 20th anniversary of Dunblane, I will think of the Scottish children whose lives were lost that day, and how many more were saved by the determined campaigning of those left behind.