It is coming up to the 30th anniversary of the Dunblane massacre. It’s a difficult read that article, but I wonder if the reason we got legislation so fast was because the local MP and the minister for Scotland both had close connections to the area and the school, and they had both had prior contact with the perpetrator. Perhaps most fundamentally, they went into the gym and saw the children’s bodies before the police had moved them.
Let us also be honest, the UK did not have a US-style gun culture before that. Yes, you could own a gun, but it was not seen as a right. It was just that we had not made it illegal, and if I recall correctly, you still needed a gun license to have one even then. In other words, before the Dunblane Massacre, we were not in the same legal situation as the US, which made outlawing handguns easier after it. Also, while the gun lobby existed, it was nothing like what it is in the US.
What happened is the government did the minimum they felt they could get away with. This tells you something of the outrage and the strength of the campaign.
Let us also be honest, the UK did not have a US-style gun culture before that. Yes, you could own a gun, but it was not seen as a right. It was just that we had not made it illegal, and if I recall correctly, you still needed a gun license to have one even then. In other words, before the Dunblane Massacre, we were not in the same legal situation as the US, which made outlawing handguns easier after it. Also, while the gun lobby existed, it was nothing like what it is in the US.
Before Dunblane, we had Hungerford. The result of the shooting at Hungerford was that center-fire semi-automatic rifles were banned, as well as a general tightening of the rules surrounding firearms ownership.
I didn’t realise, until some very recent googling, that it is still legal for civilians to carry guns (including handguns) in Northern Ireland - and self-defence is an accepted reason for doing so.
In the 1970s, owning and carrying a gun was governed by the 1968 Firearms Act. This is nowhere near the "rights" situation of the US today. This is before Hungerford. Apparently, we started tightening up on Gun ownership and other behaviour around firearms in the 1920s. So, seventy years had passed between when we were last "in line"* with the US stance, and when Dunblane triggered the response, it did.
*"in line" in scare quotes because I do not culturally understand our discourse ever saw it as a right, just something that people did or did not do according to circumstance. It was, in other words, a matter of custom, not law, but not a free-for-all either.
It's all tied up with medieval attitudes to hunting. Peasants were expected to practice archery regularly, in preparation for being drafted whenever the King summoned your lord to fight. But you weren't allowed to use these skills to hunt game. That was the prerogative of the nobility. You weren't even allowed to trap rabbits unless you had permission from the landowner, and guess who was in charge of the court judging you if you got caught? Any bits of land not owned by the nobility (or the Church) would have been royal forests, and you really didn't want to get caught hunting there.
So no, 'hunting to put food on the table' is very much not part of popular British culture. It's been an elite pursuit for centuries, and after the professionalisation of the armed forces most ordinary people would only have learned how to fire a gun if they joined the army.
In the 1970s, owning and carrying a gun was governed by the 1968 Firearms Act. This is nowhere near the "rights" situation of the US today. This is before Hungerford. Apparently, we started tightening up on Gun ownership and other behaviour around firearms in the 1920s. So, seventy years had passed between when we were last "in line"* with the US stance, and when Dunblane triggered the response, it did.
*"in line" in scare quotes because I do not culturally understand our discourse ever saw it as a right, just something that people did or did not do according to circumstance. It was, in other words, a matter of custom, not law, but not a free-for-all either.
The tightening up on gun ownership in the 1920s was a consequence of the Great War, prior to that there weren't very many guns in civil ownership (as @Jane R noted, there was very little need for people to own a gun, and they were quite expensive) but the end of the war saw lots of former soldiers returning to Britain with training to use guns, and quite a few of them with souvenirs. There was a real concern that working men, trained as soldiers with access to guns, could attempt to emulate the revolution in Russia. Gun control, taking a lot of those souvenirs out of circulation was intended to prevent armed revolution.
@Alan Cresswell What you are saying is that while the US saw guns in the hands of the populace as the best defence against the communists, the UK believed it opened the way for Communist armed revolution!
Up to the time of our Civil War/War between the gun ownership was not widespread in early America. Guns were expensive and often unreliable. Even with our militia laws states would keep public armories because private ownership was insufficient. The Civil War changed that. Mass production of firearms caused gun ownership to accelerate after 1865.
In the 1970s, owning and carrying a gun was governed by the 1968 Firearms Act. This is nowhere near the "rights" situation of the US today. This is before Hungerford. Apparently, we started tightening up on Gun ownership and other behaviour around firearms in the 1920s. So, seventy years had passed between when we were last "in line"* with the US stance, and when Dunblane triggered the response, it did.
*"in line" in scare quotes because I do not culturally understand our discourse ever saw it as a right, just something that people did or did not do according to circumstance. It was, in other words, a matter of custom, not law, but not a free-for-all either.
The tightening up on gun ownership in the 1920s was a consequence of the Great War, prior to that there weren't very many guns in civil ownership (as @Jane R noted, there was very little need for people to own a gun, and they were quite expensive) but the end of the war saw lots of former soldiers returning to Britain with training to use guns, and quite a few of them with souvenirs. There was a real concern that working men, trained as soldiers with access to guns, could attempt to emulate the revolution in Russia. Gun control, taking a lot of those souvenirs out of circulation was intended to prevent armed revolution.
I'm sure a lot of Agatha Christies are based on the premise that someone came back from the War with a gun which they just put away in a drawer and forgot about until it became a murder weapon.
Indeed @HelenEva . And going further back, in the Sherlock Holmes stories Dr Watson (as an army medic who had seen service in the Afghan war) has his service revolver and Holmes often asks him to bring it along to any planned confrontation with the villain. It's never presented as illicit, merely that as an ex-army man he has a gun whereas Holmes doesn't, and it's a useful thing to have in the situations that they find themselves in.
.. though as far as I remember, Watson never actually fires his gun. Its presence merely seems to serve as an intensifier in the narrative: showing that this villain-of-the-week is seen as being a particularly nasty piece of work.
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What happened is the government did the minimum they felt they could get away with. This tells you something of the outrage and the strength of the campaign.
Before Dunblane, we had Hungerford. The result of the shooting at Hungerford was that center-fire semi-automatic rifles were banned, as well as a general tightening of the rules surrounding firearms ownership.
*"in line" in scare quotes because I do not culturally understand our discourse ever saw it as a right, just something that people did or did not do according to circumstance. It was, in other words, a matter of custom, not law, but not a free-for-all either.
So no, 'hunting to put food on the table' is very much not part of popular British culture. It's been an elite pursuit for centuries, and after the professionalisation of the armed forces most ordinary people would only have learned how to fire a gun if they joined the army.
Talk about a cultural difference
I'm sure a lot of Agatha Christies are based on the premise that someone came back from the War with a gun which they just put away in a drawer and forgot about until it became a murder weapon.