THE Dunblane massacre has always stuck with me. My family’s fear and horror in its aftermath are some of my earliest memories, as I was the same age as the 15 primary children who were killed at the hands of Thomas Hamilton in March 1996.
The thought of parents running to the school gates not knowing if their child was alive or dead, the images of piles of flowers and tributes to the children and their teacher, and the outpouring of mourning and grief must never be forgotten.
It was one of the deadliest mass shootings in UK history. For Rupert Lowe to dismiss it as “one murder” is completely beyond the pale.
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Now, as a mother to a young child, I can't even comprehend the loss those parents must have felt, and continue to feel.
William Douglas Cullen, in the report following inquiry into the shootings at Dunblane Primary School, revealed some of the horror of that day.
“I narrate that an examination of the scene showed that, having entered the school with four handguns and 743 rounds of ammunition, Thomas Hamilton fired 105 rounds with a 9mm Browning self-loading pistol over a space of about three-four minutes before committing suicide with one shot from a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver,” he wrote.
The Cullen report, as it is known, recommended a ban on high-calibre handguns while restricting smaller firearms to licenced gun clubs. It was brought in by John Major’s Conservative administration in 1997, and expanded on by the subsequent New Labour government.
In recent months, as MAGA’s pro-gun lobbying seeps further into our politics, Lowe and Nigel Farage have tried to obfuscate over the impact of the gun laws that were brought in in response to that day.
Farage earlier this year doubled down on previous comments where he said the gun laws brought in after Dunblane were “ludicrous” and that it was “crackers” the British Olympic pistol team had to train abroad.
But in the US there have been 158 people killed and 434 injured from school shootings alone since 2018.
Dunblane was an unimaginable tragedy and cracking down on handguns was the right thing to do. It will have saved countless lives in those 30 years since it happened.
Can you imagine if Scottish school children had to be trained to barricade their classroom doors, hide under their desks, or bring bulletproof backpacks to school?
That is the reality that many in the US are living with, and it is the world that Lowe and Farage want to drag us into.
Lowe made his comments on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he moaned: “They don’t want the public to have guns. As you probably know they banned handguns in the late 90s, because there was a murder up in Dunblane.
When Rogan queried this by asking, “One murder?” Lowe repeated: “One murder.”
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He then went on to complain that his father’s Oxford University shooting pistols were taken away.
Lowe and Restore would later double down after being contacted by journalists to ask if he would apologise to those families who lost their children and mother.
“Rupert was clearly referring to one incident,” a spokesperson for the hard-right party said.
Why would we expect anything less from a politician who will distort reality to suit his own ends?
Thankfully, Lowe’s hard-right party is currently in the political wilderness, despite Elon Musk’s efforts to amplify him as much as possible on Twitter/X.
As Jack Crozier, whose sister Emma was killed, told LBC: "Rupert Lowe’s father had his pistols taken away. My father had his daughter taken away.
"He knew exactly what happened at Dunblane... the people of Great Yarmouth need to consider if this is who they want representing them."
Kenny Ross, who lost his five-year-old daughter Joanna, also told the broadcaster: "Thirty years have passed and people forget what we had to go through and I wouldn't want anyone else to go through that.
“It's people like him that are very ignorant and selfish."
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What happened at Dunblane was a national trauma that led to decisive actions that made the whole of the UK safer.
To reduce it to a talking point on a podcast to moan about your father losing the use of his shooting pistols is not just inaccurate, but an insult to those who lived through it, and those who did not survive it.
Nearly 30 years on, the details of that day still matter, because the memory and mourning of it shaped policy that has protected potentially thousands of lives.
The UK chose one path after Dunblane, the US has chosen another. The differences between those decisions are visible in classrooms to this day.
To call it "one murder" is not just wrong, it is completely indefensible.