Children should be taught to use guns, says Tory

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative spokesman on homeland security, likened the ban to outlawing cars because of deaths in road accidents.

During a fringe meeting at the party’s spring conference at the weekend, he was reported to have said: "It is so much more sensible in my view to train children to handle and have a respect for weapons than simply to ban them."

The call provoked an angry reaction from Dunblane and other political parties.

In comparing the ban to outlawing cars, he was quoted in the Daily Record newspaper as saying: "It’s exactly the same argument that I would deploy about joy-riding.

"It is clearly highly undesirable that people get killed on the roads by motor cars, but we don’t ban motor cars. People need to learn how to drive a motor car safely and have respect for it."

Conservative Central Office last night referred calls to Mr Mercer himself, who said he had been quoted out of context.

But the newspaper said he told the fringe meeting that in his constituency near Nottingham: "Gun crime has absolutely exploded and not a single member of that lot ever belonged to a pistol shooting club.

"Secondly, if you came from a rural area like I do, a weapon is a farmer’s tool."

The fringe meeting of the Conservative Way Forward group at which he spoke was also attended by Albie Fox, a pro-gun campaigner .

He was quoted in the Daily Record saying: "I’m an ex-pistol shooter who had one of his handguns taken off him.

"One of the big problems we have now is that we have generation who have never experienced firearms except on television."

Mr Fox said the handgun law had to be looked at, to which Mr Mercer is quoted as saying: "I couldn’t agree more."

The Dunblane massacre in 1996, in which Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 schoolchildren and their teacher, led to a ban on handguns. Anne Pearston, who was part of the Snowdrop campaign for a ban on handguns, said: "It is not even ten years and the Tories are thinking of changing the law.

"If they have that as a manifesto pledge, it will be a vote loser. We haven’t gone away," she added.

John Swinney, the SNP leader, said: "His comments are utterly offensive and just plain wrong.

"The Conservative leadership should remove this man from any position of responsibility and apologise immediately."

A Labour Party spokesman said: "Banning handguns is one of the achievements of which we are most proud. Everyone in Scotland needs to know that the Tories want to turn the clock back."

The ban, which was implemented after Labour won the 1997 general election, saw 140,000 handguns surrendered and 100 million in compensation paid out by the government.

When contacted by The Scotsman last night, Mr Mercer said: "The laws which banned handguns - introduced, I must say by a Tory government - have done nothing to curb gun crime.

"During a discussion, I argued that the counter argument to a ban in a rural constituency like mine was that people should not be able to buy firearms unless they had been taught how to handle them safely.

"My comments have been taken entirely out of context - I was referring specifically to rural areas, where it is true to say nearly every household has a gun."

The gun lobby has been attempting to chip away at the Dunblane handgun ban since 2001, when the Labour MP Frank Cook tabled a parliamentary motion asking for sports shooters to be given special dispensation to practice at their home ranges in preparation for the Commonwealth Games.

At the time, Mr Cook was the president of the House of Commons shooting club.

Then, as now, leading pistol-shooters were having to go abroad to use their guns for 20 days a year, at a special range in Switzerland.

The Home Office refused to move on the issue except for granting two days’ exemption immediately before the competition under supervised conditions at the National Shooting Club, in Bisley, Surrey.

Steve McCabe, a Labour MP, has warned that gun clubs with falling memberships were trying to attract children with offers of free shooting days.

He called for the legal age at which young people could handle guns to be set at 18.