The academic year had barely begun when a gunman killed two children (ages 8 and 10) and wounded 15 others attending Mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Rather than repeat the litany of compelling reasons to pass gun control laws, or make the obvious argument that a Second Amendment written in the age of the musket can hardly be applied to the era of the assault weapon, let us consider how another country responded to its own school shooting problem.

On March 14, 1996, a 43-year-old man armed with four handguns and 743 rounds of ammunition entered a school in Dunblane, Scotland and murdered 16 children, ages 5 and 6, along with their teacher who tried to protect them, before killing himself.

The Conservative government under John Major took swift action. In February 1997, the Firearms (Amendment) Act banned handguns over .22 caliber, required that guns .22 caliber and under be stored in secure armories at gun clubs, banned “dum-dum” bullets, required gun clubs to register attendance and strengthened licensing requirements for all firearms.

The Labour government that came to power later that year, on May 1, 1997, amended the law to ban private citizens from owning (with few exceptions) any type of handgun. Britain had already prohibited private ownership of semi-automatic rifles in 1988.

The United Kingdom has not had a single school shooting since Dunblane. During the same period, the U.S. has had more than 420 school shootings.

After every tragedy, gun-control advocates have implored Congress to enact laws banning semi-automatic weapons, requiring background checks and a waiting period for gun purchases and imposing other reasonable restrictions on firearm ownership. They have had very little success.

For example, the 2022

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