The leader of Restore Britain has been urged to apologise after describing the Dunblane school shooting as “one murder”.

Rupert Lowe was criticising the UK’s ban on handguns during an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast. He said the ban came after “there was a murder in Dunblane”.

Host Rogan clarified with Lowe that the ban was due to “one murder” and the Restore UK leader repeated that was the case.

Sixteen children and their teacher were killed in the 1996 mass shooting at Dunblane Primary School, one of the worst gun atrocities to happen in the UK.

Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, said his father’s pistols had been taken away after the shooting, and that society in the UK needed “radical change” and to “release the individual”.

A spokesperson for Restore Britain said: “Rupert was clearly referring to one incident.”

Kenny Ross, whose daughter Joanna was one of the pupils killed, told BBC Scotland News that he was not surprised at the “ignorance of some people” around the shooting.

He said: “They don’t realise how devastating it was. But now we have a safer society because there is no longer private gun ownership.

“Thirty years have passed and people forget what we had to go through.

“I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through that. It’s people like him that are very ignorant and selfish.”

Conservative MSP Stephen Kerr said Lowe’s comments were “astonishingly insensitive and profoundly disrespectful to the victims”.

He said: “To describe Dunblane as ‘one murder’ is not simply inaccurate – it diminishes one of the darkest days in Scotland’s modern history.

“There is no excuse for reducing the murder of 16 children and their teacher to ‘one murder’.

The Mid Scotland & Fife MSP criticised the “casual” and “ignorant” manner in which Lowe spoke about the mass murder.

He said: “That tragedy changed Scotland forever. To speak so casually about an event that still causes such profound pain is both callous and indefensible.”

On 13 March 1996, gunman Thomas Hamilton entered the gym hall of Dunblane Primary School and murdered the 16 children and their teacher Gwen Mayor.

He carried four legally-owned handguns and 743 rounds of ammunition.

Another 12 children and three adults were shot or injured. All but two of the children were aged just five and six.

The attack lasted less than four minutes before Hamilton turned the gun on himself.

The Snowdrop Campaign, founded by the grieving families, led to the UK enforcing some of the strictest firearms laws in the world.

Local MSP Keith Brown described Lowe’s comments on the tragedy as “beyond despicable” and said the MP was “a stain on our politics”.

He added: “Sixteen children and a teacher were shot dead while 15 more children were wounded.

“Despite these hideous remarks from Rupert Lowe, the Snowdrop Campaign that followed ensured a ban on the private ownership of most handguns.

“That is the proud legacy of the bereaved families and the local community.”

Lowe founded the political party Restore Britain as a “political movement” after he was suspended from Reform UK in March last year.

His suspension came after allegations that he made threats of physical violence against then party chairman Zia Yusuf.

The Crown Prosecution Service later said there was insufficient evidence for a “realistic prospect of conviction”.