The Dunblane school massacre occurred at Dunblane Primary School in the Scottish town of Dunblane on 13 March 1996. The gunman, 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton (b. 10 May 1952), entered the school armed with four handguns, shooting and killing sixteen children and one adult before committing suicide.
Public debate subsequent to these events centred on gun control laws, including public petitions calling for a ban on private ownership of handguns and an official enquiry, the Cullen Report. In response to this debate, the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 and the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 were enacted,
which effectively made private ownership of handguns illegal in the United Kingdom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre
The ownership of semi automatic weapons was already banned in the UK because of this :
The Hungerford massacre occurred in Hungerford, Berkshire, England, on 19 August 1987. The gunman, 27-year-old Michael Robert Ryan (b. 18 May 1960), armed with two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, shot and killed sixteen people including his mother, and wounded fifteen others, then fatally shot himself. A report on this incident was commissioned by the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, from the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, Colin Smith.
The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988[2] was passed in the wake of the massacre, which
banned the ownership of semi-automatic centre-fire rifles and restricted the use of shotguns with a capacity of more than three cartridges (in magazine plus the breech). Ryan's collection of weapons had been legally licensed, according to the Hungerford Report.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre
I remember both very well. The only public outcry at the time centered on removing guns from society.
Bizarrely no one suggested more guns would be the answer, and no one suggested the teachers and children should be armed.
I can think of one similar incident in the UK since Dunblane. (Cumbria 2010) Whereas it seems the US insistence on being armed to the teeth results in regular gun massacres of innocent bystanders whose only crime was to be in the wrong place and the wrong time.
