Sixteen children and their teacher were gunned down in a school gymnasium – but the leader of Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe, has described the Dunblane tragedy as “one murder”.
Appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast, Lowe criticised the UK’s ban on handguns, saying it came “because there was a murder in Dunblane”. When Rogan clarified that the ban was due to “one murder”, Lowe repeated the claim. A spokesperson for Restore Britain said Lowe was “clearly referring to one incident”.
“Rupert Lowe described the Dunblane school shooting, which killed 16 children and a teacher, as 'one murder' on Joe Rogan's podcast.”
On 13 March 1996, gunman Thomas Hamilton entered Dunblane Primary School’s gym hall carrying four legally-owned handguns and 743 rounds of ammunition. He murdered 16 children and teacher Gwen Mayor; all but two of the children were aged just five and six. Another 12 children and three adults were shot or injured.
Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, said his father’s pistols had been taken away after the shooting and argued that society needed “radical change” and to “release the individual”.
Kenny Ross, whose daughter Joanna was among the pupils killed, told BBC Scotland News he was not surprised at the “ignorance of some people” around the shooting. “They don’t realise how devastating it was. 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 called Lowe’s comments “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.”
Lowe has been urged to apologise. The fallout from his remarks shows little sign of abating.