Scottish town grieves for Uvalde but fears nothing will change
LONDON— When Mick North’s 5-year-old daughter was gunned down at her school, he vowed through his grief that it must never happen again.
And it hasn’t — in Britain, at least. The 1996 massacre of 16 elementary school students in Dunblane, Scotland led to a ban on owning handguns in the U.K. While Britain is not immune to gun violence, there have been no school shootings in the quarter century since.
The United States’ deeprooted gun culture makes similar action unlikely in the wake of the killing of 19 students and two teachers by an 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, Texas.
North, who helped set up Britain’s Gun Control Network after his daughter Sophie was killed, said his reaction to the Uvalde killings was “shock, but no surprise.” He knows like few others just what the Uvalde families are going through, but says “my sympathy is not going to make them feel better. And it’s just dreadful. It’s just dreadful.”
North’s life was shattered March 13, 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton entered the gym at Dunblane Primary School in central Scotland, where a class of 5- and 6-year-olds was assembled. The 43-year-old former Scout leader killed 16 children and a teacher with four handguns before shooting himself. Another 12 children and two teachers were wounded.
Public horror at the slaughter, and campaigning by bereaved families that put pressure on politicians, brought about rapid change to Britain’s gun laws.
Soon after the carnage, a small group of local mothers launched what became the “Snowdrop Campaign” — named after the only flower in bloom at that time of spring — and began a petition demanding a ban on the private ownership of handguns.
The movement quickly gained momentum across the country, and campaigners eventually took boxes full of paper signed by some 750,000 people to politicians in London.
“I think our strength was in numbers,” said Rosemary Hunter, one of the campaign’s founders. Her 3-yearold daughter was at nursery in Dunblane when the shooting occurred. Hunter said “the mood in the country was so overwhelmingly in support of the change that it was not difficult to overcome” opposition from gun advocates.
“I don’t know how you translate that to a country where there are more guns than people,” Hunter said of the United States. “In many ways it’s quite overwhelming to think that people are going through what we went through here in our town.”
Like Uvalde, Dunblane is a small town. For those who lived there in 1996 — including tennis star Andy Murray, then a 9-year-old pupil at Dunblane Primary School — the pain has never completely faded. Murray responded to the Texas shooting with a tweet labelling it “madness.”