New gun laws brought in after the Dunblane school shooting “reduced the risk” of massacres in Britain, former Home Secretary Jack Straw said today.
Speaking after the Connecticut school killings, Mr Straw said there is no doubt that tighter gun control laws make countries safer. “The more you tighten the law, the more you reduce the risk,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “There is no doubt at all that the Firearms Act which I brought in in 1997, it caused a lot of controversy outside, people saying quite legitimately that ‘you’re taking away our right to use pistols, we’re not criminals’, however, it’s settled down,” he said. “It’s extremely difficult to get a license for a pistol or for a rifle and I think people feel much happier about that and safer.”
Mr Straw and his Conservative predecessor, Michael Howard, pushed through changes to the Firearms Act after a gunman shot and killed sixteen children and one adult at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland, before committing suicide in 1996.