by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
Finland’s gun laws are attracting criticism around the world after an 18-year-old student shot and killed six other students, a school nurse and the headmistress, and wounded several others with a .22-caliber pistol Nov. 7 at Jokela High School in Tuusula, Finland, about 30 miles north of Helsinki.
The student, identified as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, reloaded many times and also reportedly tried to set a fire on the second floor of the school before shooting himself in the head. He later died in a hospital.
There were almost immediate calls for Finland to conform to existing European Union laws on firearms ownership and the London-based International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), a prime sponsor of United Nation’s (UN) gun control schemes, helped publicize the event worldwide.
Finland is a member of the UN’s arms trade treaty (ATT) group of government experts (GGE) which is working its way toward finalizing a binding global treaty on small arms, including civilian rifles, shotguns and handguns. The new pressure on Finland is seen as connected to the UN treaty work.
Earlier, the Finnish government had resisted calls for it to amend its gun laws to conform to those adopted by the European Union (EU) saying because of the county’s high proportion of hunters and low crime rate, there was little need for harsher gun regulations. However, following the school shooting, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said that perception might change.
About 56 of every 100 Finns own a gun, according to a study by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies this year, putting the rate of firearm ownership in Finland third after the United States and Yemen.
The EU’s arms legislation forbids the sale of firearms to those under 18 except for hunting or target shooting under parental/guardian supervision. Earlier this year, the EU proposed raising the legal age for all gun possession to 18, a measure that drew protests from Finland. How any new age limit of 18 would have prevented the shootings by Auvinen, 18, was not explained.
According to Reuters news service, there were 300,000 hunters and about 650,000 gun licensees among the 5.2 million inhabitants of Finland in 2006, with some 38,000 of the hunters were under the age of 20.
Currently in Finland, anyone aged 15 and over can apply for a gun license with local police if they are able to offer a valid reason. The easiest way to obtain a license is by joining a shooting or hunting club. 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.
According to a local police official, Chief Matti Tohkanen, Auvinen belonged to a gun club and got a license for the pistol Oct. 19. He had no previous criminal record.
Newspapers from North America to Southeast Asia Almost immediately began reporting that a “chilling home-made video showing a young man staring out of a blood-red screen, pointing a gun and declaring: “I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit.” Many of them began referring to the troubled youth as the “YouTube killer.”
As he posed online with his murder weapon, the killer struck an eerie echo of Cho Seung Hui, who made recordings of himself that he posted to the NBC American television network before killing 32 students at Virginia Tech last April.
Set to a pounding heavy metal song called “Stray Bullet,” recorded by KMFDM, the clip showed a still photo of a low building that appeared to be Jokela High School. The song has macabre connections—its lyrics were posted on a website maintained by Eric Harris, one of the gunmen in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
The YouTube video continued with images of a young man practicing with a firearm in forests similar to those that surround the 5,300-strong community of Tuusula, 30 miles north of the capital Helsinki. The screen then colored red and the gunman was shown pointing his weapon at the camera.