March 21, 2025 - 7:00am
In the early hours of 13 September last year, 19-year-old Nicholas Prosper shot dead his mother and two siblings at their home in Luton. He used a double-barrelled shotgun he had bought the day before from an online vendor, and was planning to carry out a mass shooting at his old primary school.
On Tuesday, Prosper was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 49 years in jail. But, all too predictably, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has now announced plans to tighten Britain’s already stringent gun laws in a hapless attempt to legislate a way out of a problem no law can prevent. It’s the sort of gesture politics we’ve come to expect — not just of Labour, but of a political class which puts plasters on gaping wounds rather than cut out the cancer to begin with.
Britain already has some of the world’s most restrictive firearms legislation. The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, passed the year after the Dunblane school massacre, effectively banned handguns. Obtaining a shotgun certificate involves extensive background checks, home inspections and character references. The numbers reflect this: according to the Office for National Statistics, fatal shootings in the UK have remained consistently low, with just 31 homicides involving firearms in the year ending March 2023 — representing less than 5% of all homicides.
That Prosper was able to forge a firearms licence to make his fateful shotgun purchase doesn’t reveal some gaping loophole in our gun control regime. Instead, it is merely the latest in a disturbing pattern that includes Kyle Clifford’s crossbow murder of his ex-girlfriend, her sister and their mother last July; Axel Rudakubana’s Southport killing spree that same month; and Valdo Calocane’s fatal stabbings the previous year. The answer is surely to look for cultural rather than legal remedies.
Cooper’s knee-jerk reaction treads a familiar path. Despite endless “crackdowns” and tougher sentences, these horrific acts persist because successive governments have found it easier to ban objects than confront uncomfortable truths. For instance: how Calocane and Rudakubana’s severe mental illnesses went untreated despite numerous warning signs, how Clifford’s obsession with violent content went unchecked, and how so many young men now feel so profoundly disconnected from society that violence becomes their expression of choice.
The contradiction becomes stark when looking across Europe. Countries such as Switzerland, Finland and the Czech Republic have significantly higher rates of legal gun ownership than Britain, yet lower rates of violent crime. In Switzerland, those who are in the military keep their service weapons at home, with an estimated two million firearms in private hands among a population of 8.5 million. Yet the country’s gun homicide rate remains a fraction of Britain’s.
The Czech Republic allows citizens to carry concealed firearms for self-defence, with roughly 240,000 citizens holding permits in a country of 10.5 million. Despite this, its homicide rate is lower than the UK’s. Finland, with approximately 1.5 million firearms among 5.5 million people, also maintains lower violent crime rates than Britain.
Nevertheless, we can expect Government ministers to make false comparisons with America’s gun violence epidemic, leveraging our shared language to suggest that Britain would inevitably follow the same path were it not for further restrictions. This deliberately ignores the European evidence staring us in the face. The cliché that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” certainly rings true in Britain, where murder weapons come in all shapes and sizes, but seldom with bullets.
The uncomfortable truth is that no gun law can prevent determined individuals from obtaining firearms illegally or resorting to more common forms of weaponry. Cooper’s proposed legislative changes create the illusion of action while avoiding the harder work of addressing the reasons why so many young men are seduced by violence, online and in real life. It’s governance by headline — appearing tough on crime while doing nothing to prevent it. The focus on further gun restrictions distracts from the Government’s failure to reverse decades of multifactorial social, cultural and economic problems which have incubated the likes of Nicholas Prosper.
If Labour genuinely wants to prevent future atrocities, it should acknowledge that Britain’s problem isn’t insufficiently strict weapon laws. Rather, it’s a society in which alienated young men increasingly channel their psychological distress into acts of violence against other people. These aren’t primarily crimes of opportunity or passion, but instead manifestations of profound disconnection and nihilism that no weapons ban can address. Until politicians confront this reality, their legislative responses will remain what they’ve always been: political theatre that keeps us locked in a cycle of tragedy, outrage, and ineffective reaction.
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Subscribe“It’s the sort of gesture politics we’ve come to expect ”
It’s not gesture politics.
The media coverage of the murder is a means to an end. They want the law-abiding public disarmed.
The public are already disarmed, and you won’t find many Britons who want society to be any different. We’re not American
City dwellers (myself included) aren’t generally armed, outside the hardcore criminal classes, and I agree that most are comfortable with that.
But we’d be less vulnerable to tyranny if ordinary law-abiding Brits kept a rifle in a locked cupboard,
We shouldn’t aspire to be like America, obviously, but I’d be happy to be more like Finland, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
A rifle safe in a bedroom would probably not even get opened in a break in. But it provides huge peace of mind which they say, is cheap at any price..
There was a time when I enthusiastically agreed with that point of view, sadly no longer.
There was a time when I believed governments worked in the best interest of their citizens and that the BBC was a reliable source of information.
America’s gun culture is fairly unique.
Brits don’t tend to see being armed to the teeth as some kind of essential freedom
It is not some kind of, but in fact an essential freedom as a defense against government tyranny. That is what the Second Amendment is about.
The American military is one of the best equipped armies in the world. I’m not sure how much damage your pea shooter is going to do against a tank or cruise missile
You write as if Americans use their guns against the government. I don’t think anyone anywhere has a ‘right’ to a gun.
The fact that the constitution has ‘amendments’ indicates that it can be changed.
You are correct, the Constitution can be changed, but on this point it will not ever be. The Second American does give us Americans a “right to guns.” Americans can guard against government tyranny by being armed, and essentially if needed, participate in Militias. This is a more sophisticated question than can be argued in an Unherd comment and no…I dont plan on shooting at my local or Federal Government and its tanks and missiles. One more point I will make is that the Second Amendment is not about hunting as Biden spuriously made about ARs and deer hunting. As Cecil Adams said: A reasonable restatement of the amendment might go something like this: “Since we as a nation have found it necessary to organize citizen militias to defend against tyranny and may be compelled to do so again, and since these militias are necessarily composed of volunteers supplying their own weapons, the right of individuals to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” https://www.straightdope.com/21342263/what-does-the-right-to-bear-arms-really-mean
Thank you. This was very informative; not the sort of thing we are told in the UK.
We must still agree to disagree over the right to carry guns!
Pedant alert: the Second Amendment does not grant a right to self defence it recognizes a fundamental God-given right to self defence. The English Bill of Rights of 1689 did too but the toffs got nervous about the riff raff being armed in the early C20.
Unfortunately, the U.S. gets a bad rap on gun ownership due to the drug problem. The statistics are heavily skewed due to gun murders in very blue cities, where gun laws are extremely strict already, proving that even more gun laws won’t solve anything if criminals continue to ignore them. Having local prosecutors that ignore the law and repeatedly release violent offenders doesn’t help either.
Correct. America’s murder rate over the last decade has placed it anywhere between 85th and 110th in the world.
“David Matthews’ piece on the Luton murders raises some crucial points, but I believe it’s essential to view this issue through the lens of community-informed practice. While I agree that stricter gun laws alone won’t solve the problem, dismissing them entirely is a dangerous oversimplification. The article correctly points to deeper societal issues like mental health, social disconnection, and a fascination with violence. However, these issues don’t exist in a vacuum. They are often exacerbated by systemic inequalities, poverty, and a lack of opportunity within marginalized communities.
Stricter gun laws, while not a panacea, can be a crucial part of a multi-faceted approach. They can make it harder for those with violent tendencies to access weapons, buying us time to address the root causes. The comparison to European countries with higher gun ownership but lower crime rates is interesting, but it fails to account for the vastly different social and cultural contexts. The UK has its own unique challenges, including a history of social unrest and a complex relationship between law enforcement and marginalized communities.
Community-informed practice offers a way forward. By listening to those on the ground, by understanding the lived realities of those most affected by violence, we can develop solutions that are both effective and sustainable. This means investing in mental health services, creating opportunities for young people, addressing systemic inequalities, and building trust between communities and the police.
It’s not about choosing between stricter gun laws and addressing root causes. It’s about doing both. It’s about a holistic approach that recognizes the complexity of the problem and empowers communities to be part of the solution. We need laws that make it harder for dangerous individuals to obtain weapons, and we need to invest in the long-term health and well-being of our communities. Only then can we hope to break the cycle of violence.”
Michael Groce – Community-Informed-Practioiner
“Countries such as Switzerland, Finland and the Czech Republic have significantly higher rates of legal gun ownership than Britain, yet lower rates of violent crime.”
This is an important point, but it’s fair to wonder what we share with the US besides language.
How do rates of fatherlessness compare between the UK, US, Finland and the Czech Republic?
What about Diversity, which our Orwellian overlords always present as Strength?
What would a dispassionate algorithm identify as the best predictors of violent crime?
“What about Diversity, which our Orwellian overlords always present as Strength?”
I can’t help but agree with all your questions, with this one a major contributory factor.
Melanin content is the most reliable predictor of violence in any neighborhood, town, county, state, country or continent, which is why this particular crime is an outlier.
Maybe Yvette Cooper can introduce a law where psychos won’t be psychos anymore or be allowed to do anything psycho, but then the International Society of Psychopaths (an influential Labour lobby) would probably start agitating for their Human Rights
Typical Govt knee jerk reaction. Trying to shit the stable door!!!
If a gender psychotic is a protected characteristic then perhaps Cooper should make all Psycho’s a protected characteristic.
I of course meant ‘shut’. Predictive text knew what I was thinking though
Oops!!!!
Ha ha: nice try!
Don’t mind me. I am just going watch the trading liberty for security and getting neither in return farce continue. Is there any chance smug Brits will stop lecturing us Yanks on how they magically solved all their problems?
I’d rather live in a culture like the UK that doesn’t have widespread gun ownership. However, I agree that Brits lecturing Americans on how to solve US gun violence is unhelpful. The situation in the US is intractable. Opponents of the 2nd Amendment can’t get around this: if you disarm the law-abiding gun owner you leave him defenceless against a heavily armed criminal class. The Q is, how do you disarm criminals who already possess guns and prevent criminals from acquiring new guns?
That is why “gun control” is a load of garbage. It was first sold to Americans as a way to keep the criminal element under control while leaving law abiding citizens alone. In practice it was to disarm the law abiding while leaving criminals alone because they had a “bad life” or something. There is a canyon sized gap between how these laws are written and how they are enforced in the real world. No good faith is left to be had in the debate.
If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
and presumably, and hopefully, police armed response units.
Where is the murderer’s father?
It would be interesting to know how many murderers come from families where both biological parents were present throughout childhood.
I think it’s not just parental influence at play. There’s an element of dysgenic breeding. Throughout evolutionary history, some men succeeded by investing in their offspring while others spread their seed far and wide.
The ones who took the investment strategy tended to have higher IQ, more compassion and better impulse control.
It might have something to do with the nature of the English, who have always been a tough and aggressive race of people (huge global empire, football hooligans, etc.), The piece is a thoughtful one but it might require a bit more reflection.
Do you really think that football hooliganism is peculiar to England or that a huge global Empire – run not entirely by the English by the way, the Scots and Welsh played their part, is also something peculiar to the British? From my reading of history, as Empires go I believe it was probably one of the most benign of its competitors and forerunners.
It is widely reported that he was going to carry out a mass murder at a primary school. How is that known?
From his computer, I believe.
Most of the uk gun crime is related to drugs and seldom with shot guns. The gangland weapons of choice are automatic assault weapons and hand guns neither of which can be bought in the uk whatever documents you have. To get a shot gun licence you need a police check and third part recommendation and a home and security inspection. The weak link ? The certificate . If it’s forged it by passes the checks . So more checks will not help . Make the certificate harder to forge . And make the purchaser have a police document of confirmation to buy.