School Shooting in Finland 8 dead...

What's even more disturbing is a thirteen year old attempted to shoot himself to death during school in New Orleans yesterday.
 
Strange, but I'm having trouble getting real shock reactions over this. It's never happened this close to us before, but these tragedies have happened often enough elsewhere. It's not like nutcases here are that different from nutcases in other parts of the world.

In a twisted way, the wacko was right - the world is sick and these incidents will keep on coming unless the world order changes somehow totally.
 
About half an hour before he carried out his plans, he posted "Today we're making history!" on a finnish website called IRC-gallery.
 
And a few hours before that a video on YouTube called "Jokela school massacre" or some such. Someone could have stopped him theoretically.
 
Sad indeed. I can't remember when something like that happened so close to me.
In a twisted way, the wacko was right - the world is sick and these incidents will keep on coming unless the world order changes somehow totally.
No worries, the end of the world as we know it is quite close with peak oli and soon to be come economical collapse. Though I'm not sure that would change things to better.
 
And a few hours before that a video on YouTube called "Jokela school massacre" or some such. Someone could have stopped him theoretically.

Well, maybe the youtube moderator could have mailed the dude - I doubt that would have changed anything in his mind.

hoho said:
No worries, the end of the world as we know it is quite close with peak oli and soon to be come economical collapse. Though I'm not sure that would change things to better.

I was thinking more along the lines of everybody in the world suddenly starting to care about what happens all around them, but anyway...
 
This article is as relevant as it was last time. It will be interesting to see what happens:

Anyone aged 15 and over can apply for a gun licence with local police if they are able to offer a valid reason. The easiest way to obtain a licence is by joining a shooting or hunting club, as the Jokela gunman did in October.

If underage, a Finn needs to have his or her legal guardian's approval to apply. In addition all applicants are checked for a clean criminal record and whether they have any disability that could impact their gun use.

Violent incidents are rare at Finnish schools and metal detectors, common in the United States, are unheard of.

The massacre at Jokela High School could change all that, said Timo Myllyntaus, a history professor at Turku University.

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-30388320071108

According to the same article, about 56 of every 100 Finns own a gun. So far these things haven't happened, and I would like to see a study of what cultural impact is changing this. Is it copy-catting from the states? Is it the ability to easily advertise yourself through youtube?

Although guns are basically completely banned over here (very, very few people are allowed to take them with them - shooting club members typically have a safe at the club where they have to keep their gun), but illegal trade is going up and I think it's still getting easier to get hold of a gun over here. So far it's almost exclusively been criminals shooting criminals, but we've been close enough to a serious accident already.
 
Although it's easy to point at gun control policies, but I think the real problem lies in the society itself. Even if the gunman can't get a gun, he can still take a butcher knife and start stabbing people, just like what happened in Japan. Of course, the number of victims may be smaller, but the underlying problem of some people trying to kill other people indiscriminately is still there. So I think the real issue is to understand why some people do this, and try to prevent this from happening again (such as some sort of monitoring for mental instability, etc.)
 
Something like that happened in Amsterdam in 1995 ... a guy started to randomly stab people in a crowd of thousands. He managed to wound three before the crowd brought him down. They could go home the same day after having been treated in the hospital. You think it would have ended like that if he had been using a gun? I personally doubt it.
 
Finland ranks pretty high in violent crimes and I quess we have lot's of guns, although 56% sounds really high. I wonder how that is calculated?

The thing is that modern society does breed unstable people and some of those people have tendecies to hurt others, maybe those people don't get the help they should get to keep them in check, but that is very complicated issue. I don't think it's that easy to get a gun here, atleast to a degree where that could be seen as the major reason in this.

One can do lot's of damage without guns too, internet being full of instructions how to make simple but destructive bombs for example.

It's very sad to see this sort of tragedy happen to young students and their families.
 
I don't think it's that easy to get a gun here, atleast to a degree where that could be seen as the major reason in this.

Are you sure? Did you read my quote at all?
"Anyone aged 15 and over can apply for a gun licence with local police if they are able to offer a valid reason. The easiest way to obtain a licence is by joining a shooting or hunting club, as the Jokela gunman did in October."
 
Are you sure? Did you read my quote at all?
"Anyone aged 15 and over can apply for a gun licence with local police if they are able to offer a valid reason. The easiest way to obtain a licence is by joining a shooting or hunting club, as the Jokela gunman did in October."

Well yes I read it and yes you can get the gun, but still it's no simple process with the authorities and your background has to be clean, but yeah it can be done. They do ask you punch of questions in person and I'm relatively sure that they have some eye to spot hazardous persons.

I do think that your policy of keeping the guns in the shooting range is good one, and in general I think guns cause more problems than they solve... but it's impossible to maintain the level of control that would make all the problems disappear and that level of control could be seen as a problem in itself.
 
Something like that happened in Amsterdam in 1995 ... a guy started to randomly stab people in a crowd of thousands. He managed to wound three before the crowd brought him down. They could go home the same day after having been treated in the hospital. You think it would have ended like that if he had been using a gun? I personally doubt it.

Maybe he's stupid. But the recent case in Japan (happened in June this year), 7 people were killed. In another case, an elderly women was killed. They don't use any gun.
 
Is Japan the same in that you have to be registered as a lethal weapon if you do martial arts training?
 
Is Japan the same in that you have to be registered as a lethal weapon if you do martial arts training?

I don't know about this. However, I've heard that people retired from marines corps in Taiwan will be "watched" by local police, because they can easily kill a man bare hand. It's not surprising Japanese may do the same thing.
 
My elder sister lived in Helsinki for 10 years - throughout most of the 1990s in fact.

Although she had (and still has) many Finnish friends, she always used to make a point about how similar to the stereotype of American youth the Finnish youth seemed to be - she felt they were overly influenced by popular American culture. Perhaps there is some kind of link there.

Of course, the British youth seem to be similarly influenced by American culture as well, so perhaps it is just something which has been occurring all the way around the world. Difference is, we don't have legally available firearms.
 
Are you sure? Did you read my quote at all?
"Anyone aged 15 and over can apply for a gun licence with local police if they are able to offer a valid reason. The easiest way to obtain a licence is by joining a shooting or hunting club, as the Jokela gunman did in October."

Are you suggesting that shooting as a sport/hobby should be banned, or that they should use guns shooting darts with suction cups?

And you can't get a license for _handgun_ using hunting as an excuse. Of that 56% having guns, I'd guess overwhelming majority are rifles or shotguns, i.e. hunting weapons. They have always been around in Finland. Handguns are rare. Excluding army experiences, the only handguns I can think of having seen in my whole life are my grandfather's war-time souvenir and my police-brother's sidearm.

Oh, the decay of this western culture. It's like everything else that gives us pleasure - it will ruin us if we can't keep it in control.
 
Back
Top