Dr. Michael North’s Keynote Address at our 2023 Annual Dinner is Now Available for Online Viewing
“Gun Control in Great Britain After the 1996 Dunblane Primary School Mass Shooting: A Model for the United States”
Full Text of the Keynote Address by
Michael North, Ph.D.
Presented at the Americans Against Gun Violence Annual Dinner in Sacramento, California, October 21, 2023
With an introduction by Americans Against Gun Violence President
Dr. Bill Durston
Dr. Durston: During the many years that I’ve been working in the field of gun violence prevention, I’ve never met anyone who’s suffered a greater personal loss than Dr. Michael North or who’s subsequently done more to ensure that no one else in his country – and in particular, no child, no parent, and no teacher – will ever have to suffer another tragedy like the Dunblane Primary School massacre.
Two and a half years after he lost his wife, Barbara, to breast cancer, Dr. North lost their only child, Sophie, at the age of five in the 1996 mass shooting at the elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, in which 15 of Sophie’s classmates and their teacher were also killed and ten other children and three other teachers were wounded. Great Britain already had a complete ban on civilian ownership of all automatic and semi-automatic long guns, including so-called “assault rifles,” but the Dunblane massacre was committed by a man who legally owned the handguns he used to commit his horrific crime.
Michael North, Ph.D.
Following the Dunblane Primary School mass shooting, Dr. North helped lead the successful campaign to completely ban civilian ownership of handguns in Great Britain within less than two years. There hasn’t been another school shooting since the handgun ban went into effect, and the rate of gun-related homicides in Britain is currently 1/100th the rate in the United States.
It was an honor for us to be able to bring Dr. North to the United States to be our keynote speaker at our annual dinner on October 21, 2023. The message that Dr. North delivered is one that all Americans who have attained the age of reason should carefully consider, and the example that Dr. North and his British colleagues have provided is one that we as a country should seek to urgently emulate. Here is the full text of Dr. North’s keynote address….
Preventing Firearm Related Deaths and Injuries in the United States of America
Mission Statement of Americans Against Gun Violence
Revised February 17, 2019
Firearm related deaths and injuries are a serious public health problem in the United States of America, and the rate of gun related deaths in our country is currently at least ten times higher than the average rate for the other high income democratic countries of the world. It is the position of Americans Against Gun Violence that we have not only the ability, but also the moral responsibility, to reduce rates of firearm related deaths and injuries in our country to levels that are at or below the rates in other economically advanced democratic countries.
Like other gun violence prevention organizations, we support common sense firearm regulations. We believe, however, that common sense dictates that in order to reduce rates of gun violence in the United States to levels comparable to other high income democratic countries, we must adopt comparably stringent gun control laws – laws that go far beyond the limited measures currently being advocated by other U.S. gun violence prevention organizations. Specifically, we believe that we should follow the examples of Australia and the United Kingdom, both of which reacted swiftly and definitively following mass shootings in their countries over two decades ago, by banning civilian ownership of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles, as in the case of Australia, and by banning civilian ownership of all handguns, as in the case of the United Kingdom. We also believe that we should follow the example of every other high income democratic country in requiring registration of all firearms and licensing of all firearm owners. Finally, we believe that in the United States, as in all other economically advanced democratic countries, the burden of proof should be on any person seeking to acquire a gun to show convincing evidence that he or she needs one and can handle one safely, not on society to show evidence that he or she should not have a gun. And given the large body of evidence showing that there is no net protective value from owning or carrying a gun, “self defense” should not be automatically accepted as a reason for owning a gun in the United States, just as it is not accepted in most other high income democratic countries.
In the United States, like in other economically advanced democratic countries, stringent gun control laws need not prevent legitimate hunters and target shooters from pursuing their sports. As in those other countries, though, stringent regulation of civilian firearm ownership should be accompanied by stringent regulation of the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers.
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The Second Amendment, as it was interpreted repeatedly by the Supreme Court and almost every lower court for the first 217 years of our nation’s history, is no obstacle to the adoption of the stringent gun control laws advocated by Americans Against Gun Violence. The 2008 Heller decision, however, in which a narrow 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that the District of Columbia’s partial ban on handgun ownership violated the Second Amendment, is a significant obstacle. In the Heller decision, five justices endorsed an interpretation of the Second Amendment that the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger had called “…one of the biggest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word, ‘fraud’ – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” It is the position of Americans Against Gun Violence that the Heller case was wrongly decided. In the short term, Heller should be overturned. In the long term, Americans Against Gun Violence advocates the adoption of a new constitutional amendment that clarifies the Second Amendment in a manner consistent with the following statement in the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s 1980 Lewis decision:
The Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.”
We are confident that one day, the United States will adopt stringent gun control laws comparable to the laws that have long been in effect in every other high income democratic country of the world. The only question is how many more innocent Americans will be killed and injured by guns before that day arrives. It is our mission to make that day come sooner rather than later.