Sir Peter Lampl writes about US gun ownership in The Times after the Newtown school killings.

Moving to Boston in the 1970s, I was shocked to discover that there were more murders in that city each year than in the whole of Britain. When I moved back to Britain in the 1990s, I was worried that this country was moving in the same direction.

Then on 13 March, 1996, Thomas Hamilton walked into a classroom in Dunblane, armed with a small arsenal of legally owned guns, and took just three minutes to kill 16 five and six-year-olds and their teacher.

Watching with horror the reports from Newtown, Connecticut, I was struck by the similarities: 20 six and seven-year-olds senselessly dead this time, along with six teachers, some showing extraordinary bravery attempting to save their pupils. In both cases the gunmen had access to deadly weapons, legally purchased.

Dunblane led to a fundamental change in direction. At the time I read that a campaign was being organised to ban handguns, so I asked if I could help. Two weeks later two fathers whose young daughters had been killed showed up in my living room. This moving experience led me to fund the campaign.

The campaign won the support of both John Major and Tony Blair, and resulted in a complete ban on the private ownership of handguns in Britain. It changed my life too, as its success encouraged me to devote the next 16 years to philanthropy.

Six weeks after Dunblane, a killing spree in Tasmania claimed 35 lives and wounded 18 other people. That massacre also led to change — a ban on semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns across Australia. John Howard, then the Prime Minister, won agreement within two weeks from state and federal governments, riding a wave of public outrage. Australians were fed up with the idea that someone could turn a personal grievance into an excuse for mass murder simply because guns were freely available.

The ban worked. A study by Sydney University has found that in the 18 years before gun law reform, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia and in the ten years afterwards there were none.

I’ve spent so much of my working life in America that I have no illusions about how different attitudes are there. Cold, hard facts will not be enough to sway those whose attachment to the constitutional right to bear arms is as strong as the biblical literalism of the most convinced creationist.

Last year I visited a Florida gun show where hundreds of stalls quite legally sold every type of weapon imaginable, from samurai swords and tiny handguns that would fit in a pocket to semi-automatics like the one used in Newtown. There are 5,000 such shows across America annually. US federal law requires gun dealers to be licensed and to perform background checks, but this requirement does not extend to “occasional sales” at gun shows.

Whenever I switch on the local news in the US, it’s the same story. Someone has been shot dead in a shopping mall, a side street or at traffic lights. While mass murders make national headlines, the 300 million guns in circulation — nearly one per person — mean that they are routinely used to settle disputes. Thousands die and more are injured each year as a result, with no fanfare. United Nations statistics show that there are 3.2 killings involving firearms for every 100,000 people in the US compared with 0.1 in the UK and Australia.

Yet despite this terrible toll support for gun control has fallen. After violent crime rose during the 1970s and 1980s President Clinton felt able to outlaw assault weapons. Gallup reported that 78 per cent of Americans backed gun control in 1990. By contrast, its most recent poll found 54 per cent wanting no change (a fifth of these wanted laxer laws) and only 44 per cent supporting tougher laws.

The Clinton ban lasted ten years, but was not renewed in 2004. The author of the legislation, Senator Dianne Feinstein, plans to reintroduce it next month and I hope she is successful.

But she faces formidable foes in the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights lobbyists. Their argument that further restrictions will lead to a wholesale ban resonates with many Americans. And their power is such that, at least until now, people from across the political divide have been afraid to speak out on the issue — which may explain why support for gun control has fallen.

Even the shooting last year of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, during a spree that left six people dead, did little to change the views of her fellow legislators. Outside New York, where Mayor Bloomberg supports gun control, most politicians find it tough to argue for change because 45 per cent of Americans have a gun at home.

Attitudes have hardened over the years. In 1959 a higher proportion of Americans had guns and yet 60 per cent backed a handgun ban; last year, only 29 per cent did. I think that the explanation lies in a growing fear of crime, even where it has been falling.

People carry guns because they know others do too. Fear of guns is as damaging as their ready availability. And it is white males like me who are the least likely to back gun control. Some Florida friends of mine keep guns in their cars, so even the slightest altercation can prove fatal. If someone breaks into my Florida home they will almost certainly have a gun, making it a life-and-death situation; here it is more likely to be just another burglary.

In 1933, confronting the great depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his inaugural address as president: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” After Friday’s massacre, President Obama has a unique opportunity to break the cycle of fear and persuade his fellow Americans that a ban on assault weapons is essential to stop such senseless killing. Unless it leads to radical changes in US gun laws, the horror of Sandy Hook Elementary School will become just another in the lengthening litany of mass shootings.

Read the original piece here (£).