We're Bringing Dr. Michael North of Scotland to Speak at our Oct. 21 Annual Dinner in Sacramento

Sacramento, October 9, 2023: Americans Against Gun Violence is bringing Dr. Michael North of Scotland to be the keynote speaker at its annual dinner in Sacramento on Saturday, October 21. Dr. North will speak on the topic, ""Gun Control in Great Britain After the 1996 Dunblane Primary School Mass Shooting: A Model for the United States."

The dinner. which is being hosted jointly by the Sacramento Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, is being held at the Hilton Arden West, 2200 Harvard Street, in Sacramento. Doors open for social hour at 6:00 PM, dinner begins at 7:00, and the program begins at 8:00. The dinner is open to the public, but advance paid reservations are required. Reservations can be made via the Events page of the Americans Against Gun Violence website. The deadline to make reservations is noon on Monday, October 16.

The press is invited to attend the program portion of the event, but advance press passes are required. To obtain a press pass to cover Dr. North's keynote address on October 21, or to inquire about interviewing Dr. North some time between October 22 and October 27, send an inquiry to info@aagunv.org or call (916) 668-4160.

Dr. North lost his 5 year-old daughter, Sophie, in the 1996 Dunblane Primary School mass shooting in which 15 of Sophie’s classmates and their teacher were also killed, and 10 other children and three other teachers were wounded by a man who legally owned the handguns he used to commit the massacre. (Great Britain already had a ban on so-called “assault rifles.”) Following the Dunblane mass shooting, Dr. North helped lead the successful campaign to completely ban civilian ownership of handguns in Great Britain. There hasn’t been another school shooting since the handgun ban went into effect, and the rate of gun-related deaths in Britain is currently one seventieth (70 times lower than) the rate in the United States.

Dr. North has written a book, “Dunblane: Never Forget,” describing the circumstances leading up to the Dunblane mass shooting, the shooting itself, and the aftermath of the shooting, through the enactment of the handgun ban. Dr. North was one of just three representatives from English speaking countries outside the United States to be invited to participate in the summit hosted by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, and he contributed a chapter, “Gun Control in Great Britain Following the Dunblane Shootings,” in the compendium, Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis, that came out of the Johns Hopkins summit.

Dr. North can speak with authority about how he and other grieving Dunblane parents overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieve the handgun ban, why they felt that nothing short of a complete ban on civilian handgun ownership would suffice in response to the Dunblane massacre, and why the British handgun ban should serve as a model for gun control in the United States.

Dr. North can also speak with authority about the fraudulent claim by the U.S. gun lobby – a claim endorsed by a current majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices – that the Second Amendment “codified” into the U.S. Constitution a broad individual right to gun ownership that our country’s founders inherited from their British ancestors. In fact, the British people do not have – and never have had – such a right. Instead, the British people have the freedom to go about their daily lives without fear of becoming victims of wanton gun violence; British children and youth have the freedom to attend school without the fear of being gunned down in their classrooms; and British educators don’t have to include teaching their students where to hide in case of an active shooter on campus as part of their educational curricula.

We at Americans Against Gun Violence believe that Dr. North's message is one that everyone in the United States should hear; and that the example that he and his British colleagues have provided for us is one that all of us who love our country's children more than its guns should follow.