It is impossible in written words to express adequately the horror and shock felt after yesterday's massacre of 16 children and their teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Perthshire. Such atrocities initially numb the mind and test the tongue, but they draw out the bonds of solidarity from all the peoples of these islands.
Several broad questions are posed: are such dreadful incidents random or patterned? What lessons must be drawn about security for children and schools? Would tighter controls on the availability of weapons help to prevent them? What more effective measures can be taken to identify individuals who may be prone to commit such atrocities, such as Thomas Hamilton?
Schools mirror the society around them and represent its values and aspirations. This central fact must constrain and channel any discussion about making them into fortresses insulated from social realities. The picture looks different in parts of London or New York, where it has been necessary to build perimeter walls or introduce screening procedures to protect pupils, than it does in a peaceful town such as Dunblane. This is the distinction between patterned and random violence. It will be up to the parents and teachers in that town to decide on how to respond after their first traumatic period of grief.
With the exception of the flame throwing incident in Sullivan Upper Grammar School in Hollywood, Co Down in June 1994, schools in Ireland have been mercifully free from such intentionally random violence: But teachers have been alerting public opinion to growing threats of violence from pupils and parents and to the penetration of criminality, such as the drugs trade, into schools. To turn schools into fortresses would undermine the confidence on which they must be based. The same point applies to other institutions, such as hospitals, hotels, restaurants or sporting venues which might be equally prone to such acts of random terrorism.
The man responsible for this outrage was known as a collector of weapons and a member of a gun club, as well as an eccentric loner who had worked with children. Inevitably the spotlight will fall on the gun control laws. Generally speaking, the more weapons are available, the more likely they are to be used in anger or frustration. The lessons drawn after this atrocity will, therefore, have relevance far beyond Dunblane. The gun control laws in this State are much more strict than in the United Kingdom, for which there is much to be thankful. The review of policy must include an examination of how to identify disturbed individuals who could use weapons in this way.
Our sympathies and thoughts return to the grieving parents and teachers in Dunblane and the community of which they form a part. They have to come to terms with their loss and in due course with explanations of why this massacre should have been visited upon them by such a deranged individual.