A teenager shot dead five students, a teacher and a security guard at Red Lake high school in Minnesota (US), on 21 March. A further 7 people were injured before the shooter eventually killed himself.

IANSA member the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence said that this tragedy is "the latest sign that the gun culture has run amok" and called for a dialogue on the role of firearms in America.

The shooter, a pupil at the school, had murdered his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion with a .22 caliber handgun earlier that morning. But the shooter attacked the school with his grandfather’s police shotgun and .40 caliber handgun. The grandfather, Daryl Lussier (58), was a tribal police officer on the Red Lake Indian Reservation where this tragedy occurred.

There is almost one gun per person in the US, which suffers from one of the highest gun murder rates in the world. A report by the World Health Organisation found that the US had the second highest firearm homicide rate of 42 countries surveyed, using the latest figures available.

There were 9,638 gun murders in the US in 2003. Handguns were used in 80% of those murders. People in the US are 33 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in England, where handguns are banned. In 2002, people in the US were 8 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in Canada, where handguns must be stored unloaded in a locked container separate from ammunition.