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While three women were shot dead in Peterlee, how many officers were busy policing the hunting ban?

By George Pitcher
Updated: 11:41 EST, 3 January 2012

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I would like to know how many police officers were out on New Year’s Day enforcing the wholly useless Hunting Act, before deranged taxi driver Michael Atherton murdered his partner, two of her female relatives, wounded a third and then took his own life – all with a legally held shotgun.

Whatever your views on the hunting of foxes with hounds – and, on balance, I’m against it – anyone of a rational disposition can see that the ban on it doesn’t work, ties up police time unnecessarily and, consequently, is an untenable piece of officious legislation.

We must either ban hunts from meeting altogether, which sounds totalitarian, or repeal Tony Blair’s stupid Act.

The road in Peterlee where taxi driver Michael Atherton shot three women and himself on New Year's Day

Meanwhile, what really makes the gall rise is that a sick man can be allowed to amass a gruesome arsenal of six guns, one of which – evidently a sporting gun – he then uses to slay three women and himself. We are driven apparently to pass laws to protect wild animals, while failing to enforce relatively simple laws that protect innocent human beings from mad men with guns.

After Hungerford and particularly after Dunblane, the primary school shooting in 1996 that hangs like a dark cloud over any debate about the 'right' to bear arms, the law on gun ownership was tightened. Following Derrick Bird’s killing spree in Cumbria in 2010, which cost 13 lives, David Cameron warned against 'knee jerk' reactions and said that we can’t legislate against rogue lunatics.

And he’s right. The awful truth is that crazed and sane murderers will always be able to equip themselves with the means of mass murder. Short of keeping the entire population in straitjackets, we’ll never eradicate the risk of the lone gunman embarking on a massacre.

Tragic: Flowers have already been left at the scene

But the case of Mr Atherton in Durham is different. Very different. Three years ago police were warned about his mood swings. He is believed to have suffered from depression and had previously threatened to kill himself. In short, police knew of his instability and a few further questions might have revealed his mental illness – and three innocent women would be alive today.

Anyone who has owned a shotgun, as I have, will know how difficult it can be to acquire a licence. There are pettifogging regulations, busybody inspections and seemingly unnecessary paperwork. But we put up with it gladly, because it’s supposed to prevent the unstable and unsuitable acquiring the means to commit murder and ruin lives.

After Durham’s Peterlee massacre, the system obviously isn’t working. This isn’t a terrible one-off that no one could have predicted. Quite the opposite. It was a wholly avoidable tragedy.

The conclusion to which we must be drawn is that the Durham constabulary are either drained of resources – what with all the following of hunts and expired car tax discs to be hunted down – or have been woefully negligent in the execution of their duty.

Either way, the police and the legislators who hand them useless laws to enforce have blood on their hands and must be held to account.