The 1996 attack on Dunblane Primary School, in which 16 children and a teacher were killed, remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history and prompted a fundamental restructuring of the United Kingdom's firearms laws. The scale of the victims' ages — most were five and six years old — galvanized public pressure in a way that produced swift legislative action, including the near-total prohibition of private handgun ownership in Great Britain.

His criminal career combined operational audacity with careful planning — armed robberies, years evading capture across multiple countries, and two prison escapes that drew on explosives, hostages, and a hijacked helicopter. The 2010 robbery that killed a police officer marked the point at which the toll of his actions became irreversible. French authorities' description of him as "dangerous" beyond his reputation acknowledged something the escapes made plain: the gap between his notoriety and his actual capabilities was smaller than folklore tends to suggest.