This is one way in which a large portion of America is culturally distinct from Britain in a way which many people do not appreciate white people being capable of being culturally distinct. In much of America, use and possession of firearms is a strong cultural marker, like ear piercing or playing football or driving cars. Perhaps it is not obvious at the BBC, where this looks like "Crikey, that's the only way to make guns MORE dangerous," but for people who are in that culture, it reads more like "Blind man triumphs over adversity to claim his rightful place in the civic life of his community."
To be fair, use and possession of firearms in Britain is also a very strong marker of a distinct rural culture. To some extent this relates to class politics as well because the upper class has traditionally been rural and derived power and wealth from agriculture, it still sees itself that way even if that's not where many people make money any more.
See also the debate over fox-hunting which was seen as both a culture war between urban and rural as well as between the urban upper-middle class and the rural upper class.
One of the reasons for the different class associations of hunting between the UK and the US has to do with land availability. There is and always has been loads of sparsely populated land in the US (publicly or otherwise owned) on which it is possible to hunt inexpensively or for free. That is not true in the UK and many upper-class landowners have historically rented out their land to farmers but retained the hunting, fishing, and shooting rights for themselves.
