Prince Philip’s Gun Views Stir Furor

Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II and Britain’s king of the gaffe, is in hot water again: The 75-year-old Duke of Edinburgh drew sharp criticism here Thursday for his assertion to a radio interviewer that gun enthusiasts represent no greater potential public menace than golfers or squash players.

A gun is no more dangerous than a cricket bat in the hands of a madman, the foot-in-the-mouth prince said.

But in a country still smarting from the murders of 16 children and their teacher at a Dunblane, Scotland, school by a gun-loving psychopath in March, the prince’s remarks drew immediate fire.

“Crass,” said one critic. “Very insensitive,” said another. “Prince Foolip in Gun Storm,” japed the tabloid Daily Mirror, as one of the world’s least politically correct aristocrats made headlines in every newspaper and television news show.

A besieged Buckingham Palace issued a public apology in the prince’s name at midday Thursday. But it fell flat because it asked forgiveness for the offense and distress the royal remarks caused without making any attempt to soften Philip’s views.

“Not for the first time, Prince Philip would have been better keeping his deeply misguided views to himself,” said Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party.

In a BBC interview aired late Wednesday, Philip challenged attempts led by the parents of Dunblane victims to extend some of the world’s toughest gun laws into a total ban of handguns; .22-caliber target pistols stored at gun clubs are still legal.

Philip said he sympathized with the people of Dunblane, but “I’m not altogether convinced that it’s the best system to somehow shift the blame onto a very large and peaceable part of the community.”

There was “no evidence,” Philip said, that gun enthusiasts were any more dangerous than people who swing golf clubs, tennis racquets or cricket bats. “I mean, if a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat--which he could do very easily--I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?” he asked.

In calling for reflection before passage of any new legislation, the prince won praise for his “courage” from Michael Yardley, a lobbyist for associations of shooters: “Clearly there has been a scapegoating of the shooting community,” he said.

While the conservative Daily Telegraph agreed with Philip’s opposition to further gun controls, though lamenting “his choice of words,” there came howls of outrage from nearly every other quarter.

In Scotland, Rod Mayor, whose wife, Gwen, died at Dunblane trying to protect her students, said he had difficulty seeing a suitable comparison of golf clubs, cricket bats and guns. “There are times when people should think a little before coming out and saying what they like,” Mayor said.

Ann Pearston, who heads the Dunblane campaigners demanding a total handgun ban, observed: “I cannot remember the last time a tennis player walked into a school and murdered 16 children and their teacher.”

Diplomacy has never been a strong suit of the queen’s consort, who has left a trail of clangers on his official travels, disparaging everything from Canada and Australia to British women--who, he once observed, cannot cook.

Visiting Hungary, Philip noted that one British resident clearly had not been there long because “you haven’t got a potbelly.” In 1986, he told a banquet audience: “If it’s got four legs and it’s not a chair, if it’s got two wings and it flies but it’s not an airplane, and if it swims and it’s not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”

On a visit to the Highlands last year, Philip irked Scottish subjects when he asked a local driving instructor: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them past the test?”

The prince has seemed impervious to criticism during his marriage of more than four decades to the ever-diplomatic queen. He is president of the Worldwide Fund for Nature but is also an avid hunter.

British newspapers count Philip’s lifetime hunter’s bag at one tiger, two crocodiles, 60 wild boars, uncounted deer, rabbits and ducks and at least 30,000 pheasants.

Philip’s son Charles, the heir to the throne, is also an avid hunter, and his children shoot: Prince William, 14, recently killed his first deer; Prince Harry, 12, has become a pheasant shooter. Rifles and shotguns are not subject to recent revisions of British gun laws.