By Bob Allen
The head of the Baptist Union of Great Britain issued a statement Dec. 18 mourning “the horrific loss of life” in the Dec. 14 elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., and calling for stronger gun control in the United States.
Jonathan Edwards, general secretary of the association of Baptist churches in the United Kingdom, said 2,100 British Baptist churches are praying for the Newtown community, “and especially for all the families that have been devastated by this vile crime.”
“I also need to express a deep longing that this moment of crisis and appalling sadness will lead to the United States of America adopting new and far more restrictive gun controls,” said Edwards, who has led the BGUB since 2006.
Gun control advocates are hoping that the killing of 26 victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School will spur lawmakers to take action against gun violence in America, such as reinstating a ban on military-style assault weapons like the one used in the Newtown shootings.
“In this country we are not unfamiliar with the awful destructiveness of gun crime, and out of that experience we urge the United States government to explore ways of curbing the widespread ownership of guns,” Edwards said. “We pray that Sandy Hook will forever live in our memory as the place which gave rise to a new and more peaceful future for the U.S.A.”
A similar mass shooting 16 years ago in the U.K. prompted soul-searching, anger and a political response that many experts say had a positive effect on the nation.
On March 13, 1996, in the Scottish town of Dunblane, Thomas Hamilton, a 43-year-old former Scout leader, burst into the gymnasium of Dunblane Primary School and unleashed a hail of bullets that killed 15 children ages 5 and 6 and their teacher before turning one of his four handguns on himself.
The attack, one of the worst incidents of gun violence in Britain, prompted a petition with nearly 750,000 names of people outraged that someone well known as an oddball and misfit prior to the attack could be allowed to own a weapon.
Within a year and a half, U.K. lawmakers passed a ban on the private ownership of all handguns in mainland Britain, giving the country some of the toughest anti-gun legislation in the world. At first, the law seemed to have little effect. The number of gun crimes continued to rise during the late 1990s before peaking in 2004, but has declined every year since.
Andy Murray, the world’s No. 3 tennis player and a survivor of the Dunblane shooting, sent a message to the families of the victims at Sandy Hook. “My heart goes out to all those poor children, their families and the community in Newtown in Connecticut, so, so sad,” he posted on Facebook over the weekend.
Murray, then 8, and his older brother survived the attack by taking cover in a classroom and hiding under a desk. While mostly reluctant to talk about the traumatic event, Murray wrote about it in his 2009 autobiography, Hitting Back.