I was eight years old, a primary school pupil in Dundee, when the news of the Dunblane massacre broke on 13 March 1996. I still remember the thick cloud of anxiety that settled over my teachers, community and the sudden, jarring changes to the world around me. It wasn’t just a news story. For us in Dundee, it was part of a terrifying continuity.

Dundee has a history of crimes committed by armed men in schools that is woven into the very fabric of the city. Long before Dunblane, there was Robert Mone, who in 1967 (when my parents were both in primary school) entered a girls’ needlework class at St John’s High School in Dundee armed with a shotgun. He murdered a pregnant teacher, Nanette Hanson, and held pupils captive for 90 minutes. When Dunblane happened, the fear was not theoretical, it was a reopening of a local wound.

Against this backdrop of lived experience, the recent comments by Rupert Lowe, leader of the far-right Restore Britain party, are nothing short of a stain on our politics. During an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, Lowe dismissed the massacre, where 16 five and six-year-old children and their teacher, Gwen Mayor, were slaughtered, as “one murder”. When Rogan asked for clarification, questioning if it was truly “one murder,” Lowe doubled down and confirmed it.

Whether Lowe deliberately misled a mass global audience or is simply that incompetent, both alternatives are terrifying. For a man who was 38 at the time of the atrocity to dismiss the deadliest mass shooting in British history so casually is callous, selfish, and self-serving. While Lowe focused on his father’s “pistols being taken away,” families like the Croziers were focused on the fact that their children had been taken away forever.

I saw the physical results of this tragedy every day at school. Following the Cullen Report, security was transformed. We saw the installation of timed locks and exterior doors that could only be opened from the inside during class. Practical, defensive measures designed to ensure that no intruder could ever walk into a gymnasium and fire 106 rounds again.

These changes were part of a proud legacy led by bereaved families through the Snowdrop Petition, which ultimately secured a ban on the private ownership of handguns. This is the history Lowe seeks to rewrite. Even Andy Murray, who was a pupil at Dunblane Primary at the time and took cover in a classroom, has spoken of the emotional weight of that day, a weight he remains generally reluctant to revisit because of its magnitude.

Restore Britain’s subsequent statement, claiming Lowe “clearly meant one incident”, treats everyone who understands the English language with contempt and disdain. To reduce a mass murder to a singular “murder” is not a linguistic slip. It is a calculated erasure of seventeen lives.

I doubt Rogan would ever platform the brave survivors or the families of Dunblane to correct the record. Instead, Lowe was allowed to use one of the world’s biggest podcasts to peddle a lie to an audience of millions. For those of us who grew up in the shadow of these events, hearing our trauma dismissed as a singular, minor inconvenience to gun owners is a betrayal we should never forget.