Imagine the tragedy, but with a different outcome. The date is March 13, in a small town with a name few outside of it have given much notice before. A man with a stash of guns that he purchased legally walks into a school. Before turning his weapon on himself, sixteen children and one teacher will be slaughtered in a span of just three minutes. Most of the victims are just five years old. A stunned nation grieves. And then, the next logical, humane thing happens. Change.
What happened to the Dunblane Primary School on that late winter day 22 years ago was a nightmare. What happened since is a clearcut moral lesson, and a very simple one: Children don't have to be murdered in their classrooms. But then, Dunblane isn't America.
The UK already had a far more restrained relationship with guns than the US long before that awful day in Scotland. But in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the nation mobilized. The founders of what became known as the Snowdrop Campaign — named for the first flower in bloom at the time of the shooting — launched a petition for reform in the existing handgun laws. Three months after Dunblane, a handgun amnesty program launched, eventually resulting in over 160,000 weapons surrendered.
And though partisanship strongly divided the way political parties at the time thought best to prevent future incidents, there was a baseline comprehension that thoughts and prayers alone weren't going to be sufficient to get the job done. "Isn't it time to conclude that, literally and metaphorically," Tory MP David Mellor said at the time, "the game is up for handguns now?"
Less than one year after Dunblane and under conservative prime minister John Major, the UK passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act of 1997, which banned most handguns. It also recommended severe controls around people who work with children. When Tony Blair's administration came in three months later, the laws were tightened up even further. Flash forward: In Scotland now, firearms account for only 2% of all homicides. (In the US, that figure is 68%.) And no UK children have died in school shootings since Dunblane. Not in 22 years. Picture that.
Did the aftermath of Dunblane magically eradicate crime and violence entirely? Of course not. In Cumbria in 2010, a taxi driver went on a spree that left eleven people — including his brother — dead, before committing suicide. And guns aren't the only means of mass violence, as the 2005 suicide bombings in London and last year's fatal attack during a Manchester Arena concert demonstrated.
Yet how can we not, when we remember Dunblane now, grieve for all the children killed in their own classrooms in America since then? How can we not wonder what would have happened if we'd learned anything at all after Columbine? Had done something. Anything. Imagine no Sandy Hook. No Parkland. Imagine all those birthday parties and softball games and graduations. Imagine two decades later, and a generation of young adults who were born into a nation that values their lives more than political lines, more than their weapons. What would that feel like, to decide as a people not shrug off child murder, but do something about it?
Shares