THE tragic death of Rhys Jones has stunned a nation which was beginning to think itself inured to the horrific underbelly of modern life.
Drunken violence on our streets every weekend... spiralling drugs use, along with the crime that pays for so much of it... and a general lack of respect for society at large. It takes something like the abduction and brutal murder of Jamie Bulger by
two other children to truly shake us - and Rhys's death, apparently at the hands of a teenager on a bicycle, is in the same category.
Aged just 11 and shot in the back of the head as returned home after a game of football with his pals, the Everton fan had no known connections with gangs or involvement in crime. He was, said one neighbour, "an absolutely brilliant little lad, an innocent little kid".
Rhys's parents were joined in grief yesterday by their extended 'family', a community whose members placed flowers near the scene of the murder and which joined in tributes at the Goodison Park home of his favourite team. Further afield, radio phone-ins have received calls from strangers moved to tears by the death, while prayers will be said at churches across the land today.
The murder has understandably caused a good deal of wider introspection, not least because it came after the deaths of seven other youths across the UK this year, and because it was followed by another shooting in Liverpool in which two club doormen were injured. One of the more depressing bits of evidence was the appearance on the YouTube website of children from the Croxteth area, where Rhys lived, posing with sawn-off shotguns.
And yet, it says much for us as a nation that we can still be transfixed by the shooting to death of a child. In America, where there were 2,825 gun deaths among children and teens in 2004, such a murder would barely register. Eleven years after the Dunblane massacre and the clampdown on handguns that followed, death by shooting is a rare and noteworthy crime, especially that of a child. Gun murders across the UK peaked at 95 in 2001-02 and have declined ever since. There was a 13% fall in the number of firearms offences, excluding air weapons, from 11,084 in 2005-06 to 9,608 in 2006-07.
In Scotland, such offences are mercifully even more rare. Last year there were 1,068, of which 98 involved handguns such as that which killed Rhys. More than 60% of offences involved airguns, which is a timely reminder, two years after the killing of Glasgow toddler Andrew Morton, of the risks they pose and the need for them also to be licensed.
There have been high-profile gunshot murders in Scotland this year. This month, Andrew Devlin, 18, was shot outside a snooker club in Paisley while attending a party. In March, Hibs fan Jamie Ewart, 24, was shot dead in Edinburgh while celebrating his team's Hampden victory in the CIS cup.
Every death is a tragedy for someone; every murder more so. But the facts show that, despite the concerns raised by such incidents, Scotland and most of the rest of the UK have not been overtaken by gun culture. Sure, guns are a daily threat, usually to criminals themselves, in some small pockets of the larger cities. Certainly, every weapon out on the streets is one too many and everything possible must be done to get rid of them.
Amnesties will help, though in reality the only guns they usually remove from society are those held innocently, if illegally, by those who would never use them for criminal purposes. What might make more difference would be more rigid enforcement of the supposed mandatory five-year sentences for possession of firearms. In fact, a statutory 10-year sentence might make even the mindless morons and career criminals who carry guns think twice about doing so. The age at which such mandatory sentences kick in should be 18 rather than the current 21.
Such a clampdown would be welcomed by every law-abiding citizen in Britain. But, in demanding such actions from our politicians, we should retain a sense of perspective. Let's respond to Rhys's murder by doing everything we can to prevent it happening again. But let's not assume that such a fate awaits any child, too many of whom are already wrapped in cotton wool and denied the freedom of being able to go out to play. It is through such freedom that they learn how to engage with others - within society's rules.
The full article contains 773 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
