Supporters of gun ownership rights in the US are claiming that strict controls introduced in Britain after the Dunblane massacre have increased violence because people are unable to defend themselves.

The American gun lobby has been put on the back foot by last week’s shooting of 32 students at Virginia Tech but is still preparing to defend itself against any effort to impose tighter restrictions.

Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives and a possible 2008 Republican presidential candidate, told ABC News that if students and teachers had been armed at the Virginia Tech they might have been able to stop Cho Seung Hui’s slaughter.

“In countries that have had absolute bans — Great Britain and Australia — gun violence has actually gone up because criminals end up buying illegal guns but the law-abiding, honest citizen is in effect disarmed,” he said.

The Home Office in Britain yesterday defended measures introduced after Dunblane which banned all handguns apart from muzzle-loading and antique weapons. “We believe that the range of legislation we have introduced to tackle firearms offences has helped to reduce gun crime significantly,” a spokesman said.

The laws, some of the strictest in the world, came after Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and their teacher at a Dunblane primary school in March 1996.

According to official figures for England and Wales, the number of offences in which firearms were used fell from 13,434 in 1996 to 12,410 the following year. Crimes involving handguns fell from 3,347 in 1996 to 2,636 in 1997.

In 1999 such offences began creeping up again. The latest figures for 2005-2006 show a total of 21,521 firearms crimes, including 4,671 involving handguns. Fifty people were killed in 2005-06 by guns, compared with the US figure for 2004 of 10,654.

The Government recently announced an overhaul of laws after a spate of recent shootings in London and Manchester. This will extend the minimum five-year sentence for possession of a handgun to 17-year-olds and give police new powers to monitor the homes of people suspected of having such weapons.

There is a similar story in Australia where John Howard, the conservative Prime Minister, pushed through strict gun control laws after a gunman with a semi-automatic assault rifle killed 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996. Gun crime in Australia has fallen by 50 per cent and no massacre has occurred since.

After the Virginia Tech attack, he said: “It is the case that 11 years ago we took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country.”

In America, by contrast, even Democrats are wary of taking on the powerful National Rifle Association which is widely seen as having played a key role in their defeats in the 2000 presidential contest and the 1994 Congressional election.

In recent years the NRA has included a critique of British laws in recruiting material which stated: “Do UK gun laws curb crime? Even the United Nations says ‘No!’”

This analysis was based on a UN report which, the NRA claimed, showed Scotland — closely followed by England and Wales — to be “the most dangerous country in the developed world” because of its high rates of violent assault.

“The result of strict gun laws in Australia, Canada, England and Scotland is starkly clear: Taking away the tools of self-defence from honest people means more violent crime,” the NRA said.

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