ONE minute of silence was observed in Britain, perhaps throughout the world, at 9.30 a.m. yesterday. It was a symbolic gesture of respect for the 16 infants and their teacher killed while they played in their school gym last Wednesday morning.
The sense of mourning here is immense, and it was obvious yesterday that it is shared. At British railway stations, airports, shops, even radio and television networks all came to a standstill.
Cross-Channel ferry services from Dover were briefly suspended as passengers, crews and port workers remembered those who had died. Two hundred Sainsbury's stores around Britain observed the silence and all activity ceased in the country's 670 McDonald's restaurants.
In Dunblane, the streets were still. Cars came to a halt and a policeman standing outside Dunblane Cathedral - where 790 people attended morning service later - wept privately.
The British media continues to search for reasons for last week's atrocity. A sex crime expert who examined documents from Thomas Hamilton's home says that adults were the real target of the 43-year-old gun enthusiast with an unhealthy interest in young boys.
"Although it was mainly children he shot and killed, his target was the adult world. He got back at the adults whom he felt had dismissed him as a pervert by denying him contact with those he loved," Mr Ray Wyre told the Sunday Times.
Newspaper reports said Hamilton had been stockpiling guns for months. One quoted a US police chief as saying that Hamilton should have been kept "on the front burner" for surveillance because of his personal history and gun possession.
The Conservative MP Mr David Mellor has joined with many who are calling for a tightening of gun control laws. "We either ban handguns or we impose many more restrictions on their possession. I unashamedly call on parliament to ban them," Mr Mellor said.
Mr Mellor plans to force a Commons vote by tabling amendments to a Bill due later this year, or by a Private Member's Bill he said in yesterday's Mail on Sunday.
There was an immediate response to Mr Mellor's proposal, with the captain of the House of Commons gun club Mr Michael Colvin, speaking against "knee jerk" reactions.
Mr Colvin, a Tory MP, said: "The differentiation being made between rifles, shotguns and handguns is a bit academic because you can saw off a shotgun and have a very effective handgun."
The Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman, Mr Alex Carlile, told the party's spring conference in Nottingham that nobody should have the right to keep a number of guns unconnected with their job.
"That Thomas Hamilton had any guns is worrying enough. That he had four of so lethal a kind is profoundly shocking," Mr Carlile said.
Meanwhile, the British government is reported to be planning legislation to ensure all new televisions are fitted by law with a "Vchip" an electronic device which allows parents to scramble violent or sexually explicit programmes to prevent viewing by children.
A National Heritage Department spokeswoman said yesterday: "The Government is considering the implications of the V-chip and is consulting widely on the issue."
At Stirling Royal Infirmary yesterday, three children and two teachers remain in a stable but serious condition, while three children are still being treated for gun-shot wounds at York Hill Hospital in Glasgow. The first two funerals of the 17 victims take place today.