PUBLIC FIGURE
Lucy Cope
Since Winning the EMMA Award
Lucy Cope is a British Gun Crime Campaigner who has achieved considerable news coverage for her campaign “Mothers Against Guns” by appearing at conferences, giving speeches and generating stories for local and national media. In 2004, Mothers Against Guns successfully lobbied the government to make it an offence to carry a replica gun in public and set a mandatory sentence of five years for illegal firearm possession.
In 2018, Lucy renewed her campaign for ‘life means life’, and called on the government to increase the mandatory sentence for firearm possession in public to ten years, as violent crime escalated across London during that time and continues to do so in the present day. Lucy Cope has continued to campaign against gun crime and extended this to growing knife crimes.
Background (Before 2003)
Lucy Cope is an anti-gun usage campaigner who set up the charity Mothers Against Guns in the UK in 2002, following the tragic death of her 21-year-old son Damian, who was fatally stabbed outside a nightclub in London’s West End. After her son’s murder, Lucy campaigned against the flood of firearms ending up in the hands of Britain’s gangs.
She estimates that she has had contact with 700 grieving relatives around the UK who have lost loved ones to gun violence. Lucy has previously stated “You go to the mortuary and you see your dead son lying there six inches behind the glass. Your initial reaction is to beat that glass – and it echoes.”
