Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe has sparked outrage with his comments on UK gun laws while appearing on the world’s biggest podcast.
The MP, who has been backed by Elon Musk, appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience during a media tour of the US.
During the interview, he incorrectly claimed there was just “one murder” during the Dunblane massacre. The podcast gets on average 11 million listeners per episode.
He told the interviewer that handguns in the UK were banned “because there was a murder up in Dunblane”. Rogan asked the Great Yarmouth MP: “One murder?” Mr Lowe replied: “One murder.”
Sixteen children aged five and six and their teacher were killed by Thomas Hamilton at Dunblane Primary School on 13 March 1996.
Another 15 children and three adults were injured before Hamilton killed himself.
The tragedy remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history and led to major reform of the UK’s gun laws.
Restore Britain was formally launched earlier this year after Mr Lowe’s exit from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Mr Lowe’s comments on the podcast prompted backlash, with Scottish Conservative MSP Stephen Kerr describing them as “shocking”.
He said: “One murder? Sixteen kids and their teacher were murdered. Fifteen other primary school children were wounded.
“My children’s school, about 15 minutes from Dunblane, was locked down that day. They’ll never forget being kept in the gym hall until everyone learned the gunman was dead.
“They’ll never forget the teachers trying to hold themselves together while reassuring frightened children.
“To reduce that atrocity to ‘one murder’ is deeply insulting. It wasn’t a single murder. It was a mass murder. In a primary school.
“Almost as disturbing was the tone – one of disbelief, even mockery, that anyone could respond by tightening gun laws.
“This wasn’t some obscure historical event. It happened in 1996, when Lowe was 38 years old.
“He should have known what happened on that terrifying day in Dunblane.
“For anyone who remembers that day, hearing it dismissed so casually is genuinely shocking.”
Mr Lowe made the comments as he gave his opinion to Rogan on why the UK has strict gun laws.
“Effectively, they are trying to make that very difficult through the licensing laws for guns,” he said.
“My father used to shoot pistols for Oxford University and he’s dead now, bless him, but all his pistols were taken away, the pistols he used to shoot with at Oxford University. I mean, we now have a society which needs radical change.”
The Dunblane massacre shocked the nation and led to the UK enforcing some of the strictest firearms legislation in the world.
In the wake of outrage and anti-gun campaigning after the atrocity, a ban on most handguns was introduced by John Major’s Conservative government in 1997.
Later that year, legislation widening the ban to include all cartridge ammunition handguns was introduced by Tony Blair’s Labour government.
A Restore Britain spokesperson said: “Rupert was clearly referring to one incident.”
Mr Lowe hit headlines last year after he mistook a charity rowing team for illegal migrants.
The MP posted a picture on social media showing a boat near some wind turbines off the Norfolk coast.
“Dinghies coming into Great Yarmouth, RIGHT NOW,” he wrote on X.
“Authorities alerted, and I am urgently chasing. If these are illegal migrants, I will be using every tool at my disposal to ensure these individuals are deported.”
But the vessel pictured was, in fact, an ocean rowing boat crewed by ROW4MND, a team of four who are attempting to row from Land’s End to John o’Groats to raise money for motor neurone disease.
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