2021 was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tragic massacre of 16 primary-school children in Dunblane, a town in Scotland. The crime was committed by a man armed with four handguns. The horror of this event led to major changes in UK gun laws to restrict who can own them.
By contrast, we continue to hear horror stories of mass shootings in the USA with no change in their gun laws. For example, in 2019 in the USA there were 3.96 murders committed with a gun per 100,000 people. In the UK the figure was 0.04 per 100,000 people. In the USA in 2020 there were 614 mass shootings resulting in 446 deaths. In the UK there have only been two mass shootings in the 25 years since Dunblane — 12 deaths in Cumbria (2010) and 6 deaths in Plymouth (2021), as well as 6 mass attacks (for example the Manchester Arena bombing and the London Bridge attack).
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