A campaigner whose five-year-old sister was killed in the Dunblane massacre said to ‘never forget the lives lost’ 25 years ago as he revealed he’s fighting to change gun laws in the US.
Jack Crozier, 27, lost his sister Emma in the tragedy on 13 March 1996 and was instrumental in the subsequent Snowdrop Campaign, which launched a petition in for a crackdown on handguns in the UK.
He has now joined forces with campaigning groups in Parkland, Florida following a mass school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas school in which 17 lives were lost in 2018.
Appearing on Lorraine, he told that we should remember ‘lessons learned’ 25 years ago after teacher Gwen Mayor and 16 pupils were killed when Thomas Hamilton opened fire on them in the Dunblane Primary School.
Jack Crozier, 27, lost his little sister Emma in the tragedy on 13 March 1996 and appeared on Lorraine today as he revealed he’s fighting to change gun laws in the US
Emma Crozier was five-years-old when she lost her life after Thomas Hamilton opened fire on teachers and pupipls in the Dunblane Primary School
‘It’s important we never forget those we lost 25 years ago’, said Jack, ‘but the other thread to that is we never let it happen again and we take the lessons learned 25 years ago and make sure we remember what happened.’
The Dunblane school massacre was one of the deadliest mass murders in UK history, when gunman Hamilton killed sixteen children and one teacher at Dunblane primary school near Stirling, Scotland.
John Major’s government introduced legislation to ban handguns over 22 calibre within a year of the shooting and Tony Blair’s Labour government extended this ban to include all handguns in 1997.
Jack wants other countries to follow in the UK’s lead, but acknowledged that while it was a ‘fight’ to get handguns banned in this country, the US will be an ‘insurmountable challenge’.
Pictured, two children standing in front of the flower tribute to the tragic massacre that took place at Dunblane Primary School in 1996
‘It wasn’t the same as it is in America,’ said Jack, ‘People look at America and they see the gun lobby and they think about that insurmountable challenge people in America have on their hands.
‘It wasn’t quite the same, but we had a fight and the government at the time didn’t accept the changes we wanted to bring in and we needed a change of government to bring in the changes we needed.’
Following a massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school, Jack was travelled to the US to campaign against the current gun laws, inspired that teens were ‘standing up’ to gun laws because they were ‘tired of being shot in their school’.
‘That was this unbelievable grassroots movement which had parallels with the Snowdrop Campaign’, he said.
‘But instead of it being parents and adults, it was the teenagers tired of being shot in their school, standing up and making the changes they needed to make.
The campaigner told host Lorraine Kelly (pictured) he was inspired to travel to Florida following a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 2018
Jack wants other countries to follow in the UK’s lead, but acknowledged that while it was a ‘fight’ to get handguns banned in this country, the US will be an ‘insurmountable challenge’
‘I’m never professing to have the solutions myself, I don’t have the answers for these people. But what we have in the UK is a platform to use our voices and give power to people who have those solutions.’
He went on to comment on the people at the ‘top of the political tree’ here in the UK and said we still need to be ‘vigilant’ when it comes to gun laws.
He recalled an article written by Boris Johnson at the time of the massacre which said a firearms law did not save the lives of the victims and that an outright ban on firearms was a ‘knee-jerk reaction’.
‘We need to be so vigilant here in the UK and you need to look at people at the top of the political tree’, he said.
‘People like Boris Johnson, after Dunblane, before my sister was even buried, he wrote an article saying the ban on handguns was a knee jerk reaction.
‘Those are the people at the top of the tree, that’s what we were up against it 25 years ago, but they’re still there and we need to be so vigilant.’
Jack commented on the recent change in US administration, praising Biden for his ‘amazing’ record of gun violence prevention.
‘Trump was never going to be the guy to make the changes we needed, said Jack. Joe Biden’s track record on gun violence prevention is amazing.
‘But it’s the work of those grassroots organisations that have got gun control to the top of the political agenda in America and it’s job of people like Joe Biden to enforce that change.’