Scottish Tragedy Triggers Debate on Gun Ownership

When police in quiet Buckinghamshire northwest of London peaceably arrested a 14-year-old boy Monday who had disappeared with two .22-caliber rifles and two handguns, media interest was so intense that the police chief had to hurriedly schedule a news conference.

Suddenly, guns are Topic A in a country that has some of the stiffest gun laws on Earth and where not even most police are armed.

The reason is as plain as the tears of the mourners were Monday at the first four funerals in Dunblane, Scotland, for the 16 children shot to death with their teacher in a village school last week.

A transatlantic echo to the long-standing American debate, the tragedy at Dunblane has triggered national soul-searching about gun ownership in Britain. Analysts and activists parade before TV cameras to mull what needs to be most urgently addressed. The trigger? Or the finger?

On the one side are demands for tougher laws, even an outright ban. On the other is the belief that it is senseless to tinker with good laws because outlaws and madmen will inevitably find a way around them. Long before Thomas Hamilton shot the schoolchildren last week, another loner, Michael Ryan, killed 14 people and himself and wounded 14 others with an AK-47 in the English town of Hungerford in 1987.

“Twice in 10 years we’ve had maniacs from these gun clubs busting out and killing innocent people,” said David Mellor, a Conservative member of Parliament who wants to ban handguns. “If it happens a third time, God help Parliament and any government that hasn’t taken the steps that need to be taken.”

Despite a questionable reputation that dogged him for more than two decades, Hamilton was a gun owner in good standing. All four guns that Hamilton carried into Dunblane Primary School on Wednesday were legal.

“If a criminal or someone deranged wants a gun, he can go to a pub and hire one for an evening. Tougher laws would not stop those people,” said Robin Peal of the British Assn. for Shooting and Conservation, part of the national gun lobby.

Guns have been an accepted part of British life for as long as spark has met powder. The House of Commons has a rifle range, which recently decided to allow pistol shooting. Indeed, the American right to bear arms was borrowed by the framers of the American Constitution from English Common Law.

Still, despite its share of 20th century ills, Britain has thus far been spared the everyday gun violence that scars the United States. By government count, there are 296,800 legally held rifles and pistols among the 58 million residents of the United Kingdom, and 1,330,000 shotguns.

There may be three or four times as many handguns held illegally, by some estimates, but there are fewer than 100 gun deaths each year in the British Isles.

In Scotland in 1994, the last year for which full figures are available, guns were used in 8% of murders, 7% of robberies and 1% of assaults. In 57% of offenses in which guns were used, the main firearm was an air gun, according to Scottish police figures.

Automatic weapons were banned after the massacre at Hungerford. One of the good citizens who subsequently surrendered an AK-47 was Thomas Hamilton. The government paid him for it--not enough, he complained.

Since the ban, Peal said, about 100,000 people have abandoned shooting as sport because of bureaucracy “without perceivable gains to public security.”

A permit requires the applicant to have good reason to own a gun, to pose no threat to the public and to disclose any form of mental illness. Few who apply, though, are refused.

In the wake of the Dunblane massacre, there are calls for psychological testing as part of the licensing procedure. A spokesman for the National Pistol Assn. deplored what he called “an extra layer of bureaucracy.”

Rifles and shotguns are an integral and noncontroversial part of British country life, but current law forbids the use of pistols anywhere except on an authorized range.

Not even senior police officers agree on whether guns should be allowed in homes; Hamilton kept his in a shabby apartment filled with pictures of young boys in swimming trunks.

Lord Cullen, a Scottish judge whose inquiry into the Dunblane shootings will focus on Hamilton and how he managed to keep his guns, is expected to make recommendations on licensing and control of weapons in a report due before summer.

Mellor, for his part, says he will force a vote on handguns by putting forth amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill later this year.

Richard Dukes, the lawmaker’s assistant, says that Mellor will seek support for the ban across party lines, but even within the ruling Conservatives there is strong sentiment against an outright ban.

George Robertson, the opposition Labor Party spokesman on Scotland, said even halfway measures would be welcome.

“This was a guy deranged, crazed, out of control. There is no gun law--or any law in the world--that would stand in the way of that. But we should certainly make it more difficult.”

Robertson speaks from a particular perspective. He lives in Dunblane. Not long ago, his son briefly belonged to a boys’ athletic club run by Hamilton. The boy dropped out when Robertson visited a class and didn’t like the way Hamilton was running it.