******The Home Affairs Select Committee concluded in 1996 that a ban on handguns would be "panic legislation" and would do little to prevent a repeat of the Dunblane incident. It also said that rules governing gun ownership must be changed to prevent people such as Thomas Hamilton from owning weapons.[3]
The Cullen Inquiry recommended tighter control of handgun ownership as well as other changes in school security and vetting of people working with children under 18. However because the Hungerford massacre also involved a legal gun owner killing with his legally-held guns, public feeling had turned against private gun ownership, allowing a much more restrictive ban on handguns to pass.
Security in schools, particularly primary schools, was improved in response to the Dunblane massacre and two other tragedies which occurred at around the same time – the murder of London headmaster Phillip Lawrence and the wounding of six toddlers and a nursery nurse at a Wolverhampton nursery school.
Mrs. Ann Pearson, a friend of some of the bereaved families, founded a very widely supported campaign, named the Snowdrop Petition (because March is snowdrop time in Scotland), which gained 705,000 signatures in support, and was successful in pressing Parliament, and the then-current Conservative government, into introducing a ban on all cartridge ammunition handguns with the exception of .22 calibre single-shot weapons. The families of the victims were active in the lobbying campaign as was the Gun Control Network, also set up in the aftermath of the shootings, and whose members included parents of victims at Dunblane and of the Hungerford Massacre. The campaign was also supported by a number of newspapers, including the Sunday Mail, a Scottish tabloid whose own petition to ban handguns had raised 428,279 signatures within five weeks of the massacre.
Following the 1997 General Election, the Labour government of Tony Blair introduced the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, banning the remaining .22 cartridge handguns, and leaving only muzzle-loading and historic handguns legal, as well as certain sporting handguns (e.g. "Long-Arms") that fall outside the Home Office Definition of a "Handgun" due to their dimensions.
Have you ever noticed how the NRA\’s version of the second amendment is only a fragment of the whole thing? Theirs looks like this: "…the right of the people to keep and bear arms…. shall not be infringed". What\’s with all of the "…"? The whole thing looks like this:A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a
free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.Now, if the modern militia is the Reserve and the National Guard, doesn\’t the second amendment mean that the reserve and the guard should have guns? How does that mean that everyone can own one?
Amen. I fear this every day with both of my parents working in education. I live in the false hope that my Dad is at least risk because he works at an elementary school, but who\’s to say that some parent won\’t get mad about a grade their kid gets in third grade reading and plow into the school with a gun? ::shudder::
Scary, scary world we live in these days.
Amanda 🙂
… and those of us who work on higher-education campuses (three people in my IMMEDIATE family, myself not included) were just starting to feel like the security and alert measures that became so obviously necessary after VA Tech were going to help …
I watched The Brave One on Monday night and hated it and what it was saying. Guns just suck. Let me know when y\’all are packing up and we\’ll come, too.
try working in financial aid at a university. people get pretty irate when you work with their money. we never shut our doors when speaking with students and we never leave anyone alone in the office. it is so, so sad.
I have been thinking about a comment on this for a few days. Growing up in gun culture, as a kids it was common here, gun racks in trucks a pistol tucked behind the back seat. I will admit to worrying about having an unarmed population in the even of war. (Although personally we own none, so I don\’t know how much sense that makes.) However I have to admit I worry about exactly what you said, and had some fears when my husband was a teacher. Reality is we are far more likely to be attacked in one of these disgruntled person shootings, or a robbery. I wonder if removing guns would correct the problem, since it wouldn\’t correct the psychology that makes a person think they have the right to shoot up a bunch of their peers and then themselves. However I have no problems making it much much harder to get one.