The Hungerford massacre occurred on 19 August 1987 . A 27-year-old unemployed local labourer , Michael Robert Ryan , armed with several weapons including a Type 56 assault rifle and a Beretta pistol , shot and killed or fatally wounded 16 people around the town including his mother , and wounded 15 others , then killed himself in a local school after being surrounded by armed police . All of his victims were shot in the town or in nearby Savernake Forest . A report on this incident was commissioned by Home Secretary Douglas Hurd from the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police , Colin Smith . It is one of three highly costly firearms atrocities in terms of lives in the United Kingdom since the invention of such rapid fire weapons , the other two being the Dunblane massacre and Cumbria shootings . The massacre led to the Firearms ( Amendment ) Act 1988 , which banned the ownership of semi-automatic centre-fire rifles and restricted the use of shotguns with a magazine capacity of more than two rounds . The Hungerford Report had demonstrated that Ryan 's collection of weapons was legally licensed
Dunblane massacre
Dunblane massacre
Hungerford