Actually, much of the country expected more. Howard’s proposed ban is draconian; few countries (Japan is one) are so strict. But the families of the murdered Scottish children–and their huge following–felt the government didn’t go far enough. ““BLASTED COWARDS,’’ The Daily Star said of the government. ““DUNBLANE BETRAYED,’’ screamed another tabloid, The Sun. After the government’s announcement, reporters found Nancy McLaren choking back tears at the grave of one victim, her five-year-old granddaughter Megan Turner. ““If you had seen little Megan in the morgue,’’ McLaren said, ““you would fight to have every gun banned.''
Britons were feeling threatened even before Dunblane. The murder rate is still relatively low. Homicides in Britain (population: 58 million) have ranged between 700 and 800 in recent years; that puts it in a league with Chicago, a city of almost 3 million people. But the toll has risen by about 20 percent over the past decade. More importantly, the number of violent offenses has more than doubled. Property-crime rates are higher in London than in Los Angeles or New York.
In a society that normally doesn’t arm its cops on the beat, the idea of gun-bearing criminals is particularly frightening. Britain’s gun numbers seem small, especially in comparison with the United States (chart). There are an estimated 200,000 legally held handguns in Britain, including about 40,000 .22s. (There are also 300,000 rifles and 1.5 million shotguns; they would not be banned, but licensing and application requirements would be tightened.) And while the number of people murdered with handguns in Britain seems diminutive in American terms, it has risen from 33 in 1992 to 77 in 1994.
Because guns have been around Britain for generations, some critics of the proposed ban fault the government on the familiar ground that guns don’t kill, people do. John Carlisle, a Conservative member of Parliament, said to Home Secretary Howard during last week’s debate: ““You’ve got it completely the wrong way around–you are affecting many, many innocent people for the awful, awful events of one awful, awful madman.’’ But the memory of what that madman did was so powerful that the Dunblane campaigners, supported aggressively by most of the press, wanted a complete handgun ban. They protested the exclusion of .22s– the type of gun that killed Bobby Kennedy and Yitzhak Rabin.
One Scotswoman who feels that way is Eileen Harrild, a Dunblane survivor. A mother of four, she was the phys-ed teacher in the gym with the five and six year olds when Thomas Hamilton walked in. She was shot four times and has already undergone four operations; soon she will have a fifth. Hamilton, she told Newsweekthe day after the government announcement, ““would still have killed the children with a .22.’’ She’s determined to continue the fight: ““We’re almost there.’’ In societies where the gun culture runs deeper than in Britain, the wonder is that the Dunblane campaigners got as far as they did.
Britian U.S. Total firearms* 409,000 222,000,000 Rate per capita 0.006 0.853 Total firearm murders 77** 13,673 Rate per 100,000 people 0.116** 5.25
*Estimates. All numbers 1995 except **1994.
