Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, faces calls to apologise after describing the Dunblane school shooting – in which 16 children and their teacher were killed – as “one murder” during an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.
The Great Yarmouth MP was criticising the UK’s ban on handguns when he told Rogan the ban came after “there was a murder in Dunblane”. Rogan clarified: “One murder”, and Lowe repeated that was the case.
“Rupert Lowe called Dunblane school shooting 'one murder' on Joe Rogan podcast, sparking outrage.”
Sixteen children and teacher Gwen Mayor were shot dead by gunman Thomas Hamilton in the gym hall of Dunblane Primary School on 13 March 1996. Hamilton carried four legally owned handguns and 743 rounds of ammunition. Another 12 children and three adults were shot or injured. All but two of the children were aged just five and six.
Kenny Ross, whose daughter Joanna was among those killed, told BBC Scotland News he was not surprised by “the ignorance of some people” around the shooting. “They don’t realise how devastating it was,” he said. “But now we have a safer society because there is no longer private gun ownership. Thirty years have passed and people forget what we had to go through. I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through that. It’s people like him that are very ignorant and selfish.”
Conservative MSP Stephen Kerr described Lowe’s comments as “astonishingly insensitive and profoundly disrespectful to the victims”. He said: “To describe Dunblane as ‘one murder’ is not simply inaccurate – it diminishes one of the darkest days in Scotland’s modern history. There is no excuse for reducing the murder of 16 children and their teacher to ‘one murder’.”
Kerr criticised the “casual” and “ignorant” manner in which Lowe spoke, adding: “That tragedy changed Scotland forever. To speak so casually about an event that still causes such profound pain is both callous and indefensible.”
A spokesperson for Restore Britain said: “Rupert was clearly referring to one incident.” Lowe, who founded Restore Britain after being suspended from Reform UK, had said his father’s pistols were taken away after the Dunblane shooting and that society needed “radical change” and to “release the individual”. The New Statesman reported that during the two-hour podcast, Lowe did not correct Rogan when he misattributed a quote to Winston Churchill, and the conversation ranged from vaccine injury to the healing properties of the horse tranquiliser Ivermectin.
The question now is whether Lowe will apologise – and whether the backlash will dent the ambitions of a party polling at just 4.5%.