You can’t solve the problem by buying more guns’: British tennis ace Andy Murray calls for changes to US gun laws as he recalls his own experience as a survivor of bloody school shooting massacre
- Salvador Roma, 18, opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Texas last week
- Tennis player Andy Murray survived a school shooting in Scotland in 1996
- The Dunblane massacre remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history
- Murray was age nine when the shooter killed 16 pupils and teacher at his school
- He said he is ‘upset’ and ‘angry’ and called for urgent reform to US gun laws
British tennis player Andy Murray, a survivor of Britain’s deadliest-ever school shooting, said the killing of 19 children and two teachers in Texas has made him ‘angry’ and ‘incredible upset’.
Salvador Roma, an 18-year-old high school student in Uvalde, Texas, opened fire at Robb Elementary School last week killing 19 students and two teachers after first shooting his 66-year-old grandmother at their home.
It was the deadliest shooting at a US grade school since the shocking attack at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, almost a decade ago.
Murray, 35, was just nine-years-old when killer Thomas Hamilton burst into his school gym hall and gunned down 16 pupils and a teacher with four handguns in 1996 at his school in Dunblane, Scotland.
He has now publicly condemned the incident in Uvalde and said he is ‘deeply upset’ and called for gun law reform in America
He said: ‘I think there’s been over 200 mass shootings in America this year and nothing changes. I can’t understand that. My feeling is that surely at some stage you do something different.
Dunblane massacre survivor Andy Murray said the mass school shooting of 19 children and two teachers in Texas has made him ‘angry’ and ‘incredible upset’
Salvador Roma, an 18-year-old high school student in Uvalde, Texas, opened fire at Robb Elementary School last week after shooting his grandmother at a house elsewhere in the city
It was the deadliest shooting at a US grade school since the shocking attack at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, almost a decade ago. Pictured: Salvador Roma
The tennis star (pictured at Dunblane Primary School) who was just nine-years-old at the time, has told how he shared a car with killer Thomas Hamilton and attended his kids clubs.
‘You can’t keep approaching the problem by buying more guns and having more guns in the country. I don’t see how that that that solves it. But I could be wrong. Let’s maybe try something different and see if you get a different outcome.’
Murray grew up in the Scottish town of Dunblane, near Edinburgh, and was a student at the town’s local elementary school when a gunman killed 16 pupils and a teacher before killing himself. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Britain’s modern history.
Britain’s two-time Wimbledon champion has called for urgent reform to US gun laws and said hearing a child’s account from the horrific Texas shooting was ‘similar’ to his own experience.
‘I heard something on the radio the other day and it was a child from that school,’ Murray told the BBC.
The massacre on March 13, 1996, shortly after 9.30am in the Stirlingshire town shocked the nation and led to the UK enforcing some of the strictest firearms legislation in the world. Pictured: Floral tributes to the victims line a road near the school
The Primary 1 class at Dunblane Primary School, pictured with teacher Gwenne Mayor, who was killed with sixteen of the children in the massacre
THE UK’S DEADLIEST FIREARMS ATROCITY: The Dunblane Primary School Massacre
Disgraced former Scout leader Thomas Hamilton was 43 when he carried out the planned execution of innocents, first cutting the school’s telephone wires before making his way to the gym hall armed with four legally-held handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Inside the gym, 28 primary one pupils were preparing for physical education class as he entered and began shooting, killing 16 children and their teacher Gwen Mayor and injuring 15 others.
The massacre on March 13, 1996, shortly after 9.30am in the Scottish town shocked the nation and led to the UK enforcing some of the strictest firearms legislation in the world.
Hamilton became a Scout leader in 1973, at the age of 20, but was asked to leave the following year because of complaints about his behaviour at camp.
In a BBC documentary to mark the anniversary, former head teacher Ron Taylor, 63, described how he is still consumed with guilt by the tragedy.
‘It was unimaginably horrible to see children dying in front of you. I felt enormous guilt – more than a survivor’s guilt. It was my school, I felt violated,’ he said.
‘As a headteacher what happened to me that day was the worst experience any headteacher could have. People have to cope in their own way.
‘One of the things I have at home is a box full of newspaper articles.
‘And it includes my own written version of the events of the day and I did that to help. I locked it away and thankfully I have never looked at it again.’
‘I experienced a similar thing when I was at Dunblane, a teacher coming out and waving all of the children under tables and telling them to go and hide. And it was a kid telling exactly the same story about how she survived it.
‘They were saying that they go through these drills, as young children. How? How is that normal that children should be having to go through drills, in case someone comes into a school with a gun?’
When the terrifying incident was first reported, Murray tweeted ‘F***ing madness,’ shortly after news of the shooting broke on social media, in a post which has since been deleted.
The global call for a change in US gun laws follows the news that former President Donald Trump called for an overhaul of school security in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting and demanded that teachers be armed.
During a speech to National Rifle Association members last Friday, he said: ‘Surely we can all agree our schools should not be the softest target our school should be the single hardest target in our country.
‘And that’s why as part of a comprehensive school safety plan, it’s time to finally allow highly trained teachers to safely and discreetly concealed carry, let them concealed carry.’
But while protesters outside demanded tougher restrictions on deadly firearms, Trump followed other Republicans in insisting that guns in the hand of law-abiding citizens were the best way to tackle violent crime.
He slammed local police for taking too long to respond to the emergency and said schools should be made more secure.
The former president added: ‘The monster who committed this crime is pure evil, pure cruelty, pure hatred, absolute pure hatred.
‘And while those he slaughtered are now with God in heaven, he will be eternally damned to burn in the fires of hell.’
Trump said it was wrong to go after guns ‘every time a disturbed or demented person commits such a hideous crime.’
‘The fact is, there will always be sick and demonic souls who wish to harm the innocent and see malice triumph over good – but the existence of evil in our world is not a reason to disarm law abiding citizens who know how to use their weapon and can protect a lot of people,’ he said.
‘The existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law abiding citizens.’
Trump addressed members of the National Rifle Association in Houston, Texas, last Friday – three days after 19 children and two children were shot dead in Uvalde, 270 miles away
The attack on children and teachers has divided the US between those who think gun control is the solution and those who do not.
Trump said no one should be able to enter a school unless they had been thoroughly screened and authorized.
‘Every school in America should have a police officer or an armed resource officer on duty at all times.
‘Moreover, at every police department in America, we need a rigorous training on active shooter protocols to immediately locate and eliminate the target,’ he said, before criticizing the Uvalde response.
‘It took too long.’
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