‘Gun control should focus on the people’

Twenty years after the Dunblane shootings, a campaigner wants controversial new gun insurance laws

March 13 is the 20th anniversary of the worst firearms atrocity in UK history – the morning in 1996 that an armed man walked into a Scottish primary school and murdered 16 children, along with the teacher who was trying to protect them.

It took roughly three minutes, after which the killer turned his gun on himself.

Now the man whose wife was the paediatrician responsible for the community care of the survivors of the Dunblane Primary School shootings is urging Scotland to take a global lead on tighter gun insurance laws which he believes could reduce the risk of another tragedy.

In an exclusive interview with The Courier ahead of the anniversary, renowned Auchterarder poet Robin Bell, a winner of the Sony Radio Academy Award for Best British Documentary and a former teacher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, is calling on a politician “with guts” to start a campaign for mandatory third party gun insurance.

He and his late wife sounded out the possibility with political leaders in the immediate aftermath of the massacre.

The couple successfully persuaded the British Medical Association to tighten procedures for doctors signing off on firearms certificates.

But apart from the “kneejerk reaction” from the then Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth and other politicians who demanded a ban on the ownership of handguns in Scotland, he believes more needs to be done to assess whether gun owners are responsible individuals – and he believes the risk assessment approach by insurance companies would be the best way to achieve this.

Mr Bell, 71, said: “In my opinion the whole gun control debate has been stalled because whenever people start talking about gun control it becomes about posturing – ‘we have a right to own guns’ versus ‘all guns are dangerous and there shouldn’t be any’, so you get confrontation.

“Actually, what’s needed is a focus not on the weapons but on the people owning them and whether they are responsible people. There needs to be genuine risk assessment when someone is building up a private arsenal.

“In my opinion, the perfect start would be the most boring solution possible – and there’s not much that’s more boring than insurance.

“The crunch question is this – if you have to have third party insurance for cars, why don’t you need to have third party insurance for guns?

“Would anyone seriously advocate abolishing third party insurance for cars? No.

“So why not third party insurance for firearms?”

Mr Bell was deeply affected by the Dunblane shootings as he supported his late wife Eirwen Bengough Bell, who died from ovarian cancer almost two years ago aged just 55.

She worked as a community paediatrician in Dunblane when the tragedy occurred.

In the months afterwards, working with hospital consultants and other agencies, she treated both the physical and psychological effects of Thomas Hamilton’s assault.

Her sensitive work with the Dunblane schoolchildren in the aftermath was praised by the then Scottish Secretary and by Lord Cullen, who led the inquiry into the tragedy.

Mr Bell said the 20th anniversary of the shootings was a time to look back with “sadness and respect”.

But it was also a time to “look forward with hope”.

“I had so much respect for what Eirwen did after the shootings,” he said.

“It was just a dreadful time for the community. So one thing that has been wonderful for Dunblane is the Murrays. Andy and Jamie. They were, of course, at the school at the time. But the tennis has given the town a different reputation to the outside world.

“If you compare Dunblane with Hungerford which experienced something similar (when Michael Ryan fatally shot 16 people in August 1987), when you say Hungerford you still think of it in terms of mass shooting. Not Dunblane. You think Andy Murray and Jamie Murray.”