Slaughter of the innocents

The 52-year-old was clearly a highly disturbed, and crazed, individual who went on a three-hour rampage across a region still coming to terms with devastating floods, and a school bus crash only last week that claimed three lives.

There were also chilling similarities with the Hungerford and Dunblane massacres as well as the 17-day reign of terror in North Yorkshire in 1982 when Barry Prudom shot dead three people, two of them police officers.

Nothing can prepare a community for the sheer terror, and panic, witnessed yesterday when Bird began his killing spree, firing shots at random as he passed from village to village in an area inundated with holidaymakers enjoying the half-term school break.

Some of those who knew the murderer described him as "a normal guy".

Yet there was nothing normal about the divorced father's actions.

Compared to the United States, such tragic occurrences are mercifully rare in this country – but this offers no consolation to those families mourning loved ones whose only mistake was to be in the killer's vicinity.

The priority is for the authorities to try to understand what prompted Bird to shoot so indiscriminately, and callously, before turning the gun on himself, and whether his weapons were licensed.

Even though this holds the key to the police investigation, and to

any inquiry that the Government chooses to announce when Theresa May, the Home Secretary, addresses Parliament today, it will probably never adequately explain what drove Bird to kill so many people innocently going about their daily business.

In many respects, it is impossible to legislate for such individuals and explains why any immediate political reaction must not penalise those people, predominantly in rural areas, who hold a firearms licence for legitimate reasons. They are, almost universally, responsible individuals who pose no danger whatsover.

In the meantime, the priority for Ministers is to give the emergency services in Cumbria the assistance that they require at this shattering time – and be thankful that the swift actions of the police prevented an even greater loss of life.