U.K. Response to School Massacre: Ban Handguns

DUNBLANE, Scotland, U.K., April 22, 2007 — -- The United States is by no means alone in its outrage at the rampage at Virginia Tech. Around the world, many share a profound sense of horror -- nowhere more so than Dunblane, Scotland, where they faced a similar situation more than a decade ago.

On March 13, 1996, this tiny town of 10,000 people faced the news that every community dreads -- a rampage at an elementary school.

A misfit named Thomas Hamilton entered the school gym at Dunblane Primary School shortly after 9:30 a.m. armed with four handguns. In three minutes time, he fired 105 bullets, killing 16 schoolchildren and a teacher before taking his own life.

Had he arrived as planned during the morning assembly, the death toll would have been much higher. Luckily, Hamilton was delayed in heavy traffic on icy roads.

Keep in mind: This was three years before the notorious U.S. school shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

Hamilton was a former scout master and an avid marksman from the local gun club. None of his fellow gun enthusiasts had noticed anything amiss.

All of Britain was shocked at what he had done. Within days, some 750,000 people signed a petition to outlaw handguns in Britain. Tony Blair's Labour Party took it on as a campaign promise, and the issue helped bring Labour to power in the general election that followed a year later.

Britain had already banned assault weapons after a previous school shooting at a town called Hungerford. As a direct result of Dunblane, this country banned all handguns over .22 caliber.

"We just said after Dunblane that never again was someone going to walk into a school and massacre children," said Ann Pearson, one of the founders of the Snowdrop Campaign, a movement of parents that lobbied the British government to impose the handgun ban.

Snowdrops are tiny white flowers that blossom in Scotland every March, in full bloom the day Hamilton killed all those kids. They became the symbol of the victims. Most of them, like Sophie North, were just 5 years old.