FIREARMS LEGISLATION IS INADEQUATE

DUNBLANE is now associated with the very best of British sport following Andy Murray’s spectacular success in winning Wimbledon this year. Sadly, this beautiful Scottish town used to be synonymous with an appalling massacre of schoolchildren by a crazed gunman in 1996.

If we had tighter guns laws, people like Thomas Hamilton and Derrick Bird would not have had access to lethal weapons. This time last year I was heavily criticised by supporters of the gun lobby for speaking out against the inadequate licensing around legally held firearms. Yet the latest facts and figures produced by the Gun Control Network show precisely why I was right to raise my concerns.

The facts continue to speak for themselves on this important issue. Like the fact that of the 43 female gun deaths in the last five years, at least half of the weapons used were legally owned.

Or the fact that in a three-month period this year, no fewer than nine people were killed following incidents involved licensed guns.

The statistics are one thing, but it’s when you start to look at the stories behind the figures that you really get to grips with the situation.

Like the real story of the husband and wife found dead in Northamptonshire in what police believed to be a murder suicide. The 77-year-old woman had four shotgun wounds to her body and her husband, a year older, a single shotgun injury to his head.

The weapon was legally held, with the man said to have been a keen pheasant shooter.

Or the 22-year-old farmer from Scotland, a licensed gun holder, killed from an injury sustained while out hunting at night.

More sinister still was the killing of a 24-year-old man from Sheffield. He died from injuries sustained following an incident involving a legally held air rifle.

The list goes on but the issue remains the same. In all of these cases, the weapons that caused the injuries were not imported by hardened criminals but legitimately owned and licensed for use.

Some of the arguments deployed by the gun lobby against tighter controls are either clutching at straws or bordering on ridiculous. Like the suggestion that it’s legal to own an axe or a hammer, and these can also be used for killing people.

What a ludicrous argument. The significant difference being items such as those are legitimately and primarily used for other purposes, whereas a gun is specifically designed to shoot at things.

The other argument that is often trotted out against restricting gun ownership is that Olympians have demonstrated great skill in winning medals for their countries.

Yet the people making these points fail to grasp that being a skilled marksmen doesn’t necessarily mean you have to take the gun home with you. I fancy I might be quite good at rock climbing, but I don’t need a cliff in my back yard to prove it.

The licensing of guns needs to be sorted out. With every Gun Control Network release there are more alarming figures and more tragic stories to go with them.

Andy Murray’s success has helped Dunblane to move on. A ban on the private storage of firearms, annual mental health checks on firearms certificate holders and a public register of individuals with access to guns would make the nation safer.