Andy Murray ‘angry and upset’ after latest US school shooting as he opens up about Dunblane experience

Shahida Jacobs
May 31, 2022

Andy Murray believes it is time for the United States to “do something different” following another mass shooting at a school in Texas last week.

Nineteen children and two teachers died when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos opened fire at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24. Seventeen other people were injured in the incident while Ramos was fatally shot by police.

Former world No 1 Murray went through a similar ordeal when he was a nine-year-old student at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland in March 1996.

The latest incident left the 35-year-old upset.

“It was obviously terrible, unbelievably upsetting. Yeah, it makes you angry,” he told BBC Sport. “I think there’s been over 200 mass shootings in America this year and nothing changes.

“I can’t understand that.”

The issue of gun control in the United States is always a hot topic and the Texas incident came just over a week after 10 people were killed in another mass shooting in Buffalo, New York.

Murray called for change as he spoke up about his Dunblane experience when 16 children and their teacher were shot dead. After the incident two new Firearms Acts were passed in the United Kingdom which outlawed the private ownership of most handguns.

He continued: “My feeling is that surely at some stage you do something different.

“You can’t keep approaching the problem by buying more guns and having more guns in the country. I don’t see how that solves it.

“But I could be wrong. Let’s maybe try something different and see if you get a different outcome.

“I heard something on the radio the other day and it was a child from that school, you know, and I experienced a similar thing when I was at Dunblane and a teacher like, coming out and waving all of the children, lie under tables and telling them to go and hide.

“And it was a kid telling exactly the same story about how she survived it.

“They were saying that they go through these drills, as young children, as seven-, eight-year-old children. How? How is that normal that children should be having to go through drills, like in case someone comes into a school with a gun?

“I don’t get it – just, yeah, it’s really, really upsetting and I hope they make some changes.”

Andy Murray