Two Countries. Two School Shootings. Two Very Different Responses.
On March 13, 1996, Thomas Hamilton walked into the Dunblane Elementary School and started shooting.
He killed 16 children and their teacher, injuring 15 others before he shot and killed himself. Among the survivors, Andy Murray, who would go on to become a world class tennis star.
On March 27th, Audrey Hale walked into the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee and started shooting.
She killed 6 people, three 9-year old children and 3 adults before police shot her dead on the spot.
Two very similar countries in many ways, with two very different responses to a school shooting.
In the case of Britain, the mass killings shocked the nation. In America, the school shooting also shocked the nation. In America, the response was a call for thoughts and prayers.
In Britain, the response was a bit different.
The British government initiated an inquiry which resulted in The Cullen Report. The report recommended far greater gun control laws, which were subsequently passed. Several laws were passed in the next few years, controlling gun ownership in the UK.
It worked.
There has not been a school shooting in the UK since Dunblane. The UK has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world. That doesn't mean that you can’t own a gun. What it does mean (as I own a shotgun myself), is that you have to be licensed to own a gun, the way you are licensed to own and drive a car; and your gun has to be kept in a locked gun safe when you are not using it.
After each of these school shootings, (and there have been 378 of them since Columbine in 1999), there are brief calls for some kind of gun control, but nothing of note ever happens.
Perhaps after the killing of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary school in 2012, 20 of whom where children between six and seven years old, something might have happened. It might have been America’s Dunblane moment. But it wasn’t.
Thoughts and prayers.
The New York Times reports today that, “after mass shootings, Republicans expand access to guns.”
It is something that I cannot understand. And I am not alone. Most of the rest of the civilized world cannot understand America’s love affair with guns and violence.
Maybe it is something in the media that we are awash in all the time. Shooting people is glamorous. By the time an American reaches the age of 18, they will have seen 200,000 shootings on TV or in the movies, not to mention video games.
The heroes in all our films are always the violent shooters.
We love Dirty Harry because he says stuff like “are you feeling lucky punk?” while he points a gun at them.
Would anyone love Dirty Harry if instead he said, “I am a police officer and I am here to protect you. How may I be of assistance?”
That’s Entertainment.
That’s who we are.
Bang.
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