The Tayside father of a Dunblane shooting victim is calling for a reduction in all firearms after new figures revealed almost a quarter of a million are legally owned in Scotland.
The Tayside father of a Dunblane shooting victim is calling for a reduction in all firearms after new figures revealed almost a quarter of a million are legally owned in Scotland.
A Courier investigation has shown there are 40,000 shotguns and firearms currently in Tayside and Fife and nearly 225,000 nationwide.
Perthshire campaigner Dr Mick North, whose five-year-old daughter Sophie was killed by Thomas Hamilton in 1996, said he questions the need for licenses that allow individuals to own multiple shotguns on a single certificate.
However he also said criminals in the UK are finding it harder than ever to get guns thanks to the legal clampdown that followed the tragedy 20 years ago.
Our freedom of information data shows there are currently around 52,000 firearms certificates in force in Scotland, working out at an average of four guns per license holder.
Nearly half of all legally-owned guns in Courier Country are registered to addresses in Perth and Kinross, with more than 11,000 in Fife and 10,500 in Angus.
Despite its city status a total of 1,278 guns are held in Dundee.
Data provided was broken down to include individual totals for shotguns and a separate count for firearms the majority of which are understood to be rifles.
In all local authority areas the majority of individuals held either just shotgun licenses or two separate licenses for shotguns and for other firearms.
Dr North, who lives near Aberfeldy, said: “Clearly I would like to see a reduction in the number of guns in Scotland.
“Very often it’s the number of guns owned by an individual that’s the problem.
“There remains a problem with shotgun licences as one licence allows you to have a number of shotguns.
“I would hope a person would only get a gun if they thought very carefully about the need for every weapon they had.”
He continued: “Things have improved immensely over the last 10 or 15 years and the voices of people who oppose guns are now listened to at a Scottish Government and police level.”
With almost 16,800 shotguns and in excess of 19,300 firearms the rural Highland Council area had by far the largest number of weapons.
People in the Mearns were included in Aberdeenshire Council’s second-largest nationwide haul, with almost 15,000 shotguns and more than 10,000 firearms.
The number of gun licenses held in Scotland has remained relatively static for several years.
Dr North, a former Stirling University academic, said Dunblane marked a watershed in attitudes towards gun ownership in Britain and helped steer the country away from a gun culture that has failed to stop similar mass killings in the US.
He added: “Are we and our children now safer from guns? The answer is a definite yes.
“Gun crime is significantly lower, gun murders are extremely rare and criminals are finding it harder than ever to get guns.
“Compare the British situation with that in the US.
“Parallels are drawn between the shootings at Dunblane and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.
“The horror at the mass killing of children and teachers, the sympathy for their families, were the same as we’d experienced.
“The legacy was not.
“School and college shootings occur with sickening regularity in the US, yet too many politicians claim that everything but gun ownership is responsible.
“Their blinkered and uncritical support of gun rights means that the problem will never go away.”Mick North appears in Dunblane: Our Story at 9.00pm on Wednesday March 9 on BBC2 (BBC1 in Scotland).