In 1996 a lone gunman entered a classroom in Dunblane, Scotland. He was armed with two 9mm Browning HP pistols and two Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum revolvers.

He shot and killed 16 5-year-old children and their teacher. Then he turned the gun on himself.

Within a year most handguns were banned in the UK. There was an amnesty and 160,000 guns were handed in by their licensed owners. There were never a lot of handguns in the UK. The amnesty got most of them.

Professional criminals still have handguns. The UK still has gun crime. But we don’t have frequent mass shootings like Dunblane.

The Dunblane massacre followed the familiar pattern of a mass shooting. A troubled white male on the fringes of society, snapped. He owned guns legally. He took them from his home where they were kept legally. And he used them illegally for the first and only time in his life.

Gun control laws can stop this.