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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68712104
Finnish police detained a 12-year-old boy yesterday after he opened fire at a school in a city northeast of Finland’s capital of Helsinki, killing one student and wounding two others. The suspect and three victims were all sixth graders attending the Viertola school of roughly 800 students in Finland’s fourth-largest city, Vantaa.
Police, who are investigating the case as a murder and attempted murder, said the young suspect had a handgun in his possession when he was found in the Helsinki area less than an hour after the shooting took place. The handgun was registered and licensed to a relative. The suspect admitted to the shooting in a preliminary interview with police, but a motive is unclear. No other details were made public. Children under the age of 15 are not criminally liable in Finland, meaning the suspect cannot be formally arrested and will be handed over to social services.
School shootings in Finland are considered rare, with four having occurred in the past 35 years. < PAY ATTENTION TO THIS LINE.... Because every time there's a school shooting outside the US, it's rare...is bullshit. The Raumanmeri school shooting of January 1989 The Jokela school shooting of November 2007 The Kauhajoki school shooting of September 2008 The Orivesi school shooting of April 2012 The Viertola school shooting of April 2024 There are 5 in the last 35 years...but 4 in the last 20... but that's not all. Finland has a population of 5.5 million...which is about the same population as South Carolina, Minnesota and Colorado. NOTE: A school shooting is an event that happened in or on school grounds. I even included events where the gunman was subdued and no one was injured. Colorado Population 5,877,610 Number of gun owners 2,227,615 School Shootings 5 Minnesota Population 5,737,915 Number of gun owners 2,243,525 School Shootings 1 South Carolina Population 5,373,555 Number of gun owners 2,659,910 School Shootings 4 Finland Population 5,600,000 Number of gun owners 430,000 School Shootings 5 Look - this is just shitty all around. But calling Finland a "rare" occurrence is complete and utter bullshit. And thinking that school shootings or mass shootings of any kind are just a US problem is not well informed. Considering the amount of firearms in the hands of similar population sizes. A firearm in Finland is: 5.19 times more likely to be used in a school shooting than in Colorado. 28.36 times more likely to be used in a school shooting than in South Carolina. 775.33 times more likely to be used in a school shooting than in Minnesota. Make no mistake - I DON'T THINK WE'RE DOING A "GOOD JOB". Most schools are still extremely vulnerable and more can be done to protect students and staff. The point I hope I'm making is that this isn't exclusively a US problem and the number of firearms ownership in the examples I've used doesn't mean we're committing these horrific at a higher rate - it's just that our country is so massive when compared to others, that you need to look at comparable population sizes.
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I agree with your analysis. Statistics data sets can almost always be argued from multiple perspectives. If I wanted I could take your numbers and argue against you, but then you could take those same numbers and argue different points once again. The reality is that danger and destruction happens everywhere. Some places definitely have higher rates than others but no location or population is immune, which is why learning how to be aware and be a protector is so important.
What isn’t surprising is that even though these events are “very rare” for them they immediately started enacting stricter gun control. Because making someone be 18 instead of 15 would definitely have prevented this 12 year old from shooting someone.
While we don’t know the details, he seemed to target 3 specific students. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out bullying was involved. But that goes down a whole different topic.
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Yep – you’re totally right. I get stuck on the “it only happens in the US” and it gets me going.
Now that you mention it (you read between the lines) he wasn’t stopped… he stopped and left… which also means it could have been worse (not withstanding a weapon malfunction or just running out of ammo).
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Well, calling an event like that “rare” is up to perspective in any case.
But do you hear that point often that it is “only an US problem”? I’ve heard that a few times but mostly in a dark, sarcastic way like: “In the US schools pupils are getting shot, while here in Europe they get stabbed.”
But that’s why most of these comparative studies are or should be made in comparisons per capita.
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Yeah we hear it all the time. Usually from the people that are super hard up to be socialists, or are anti-American Americans (we keep telling them to move to their preferred country but they won’t leave…). Studies should absolutely be done per capita. Also, most people think of the US as one country, but really we are more like the EU. While we generally follow the federal government each state has its own constitution and makes its own laws. It would make more sense to compare individual states to other countries for a lot of things.
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I find it alarming that we still like to talk about “American conditions” when it comes to violence in schools or violence with firearms – although this has long since become a reality in Europe. There have been terrorist attacks in France and Belgium, gang wars in Sweden (now considered the most dangerous country in Europe), London is considered more dangerous than New York. Germany is still considered safe, although the number of violent crimes has risen significantly. Crimes committed by immigrants or migrants (increase of 30% in 2023) are hushed up or not even reported on the advice of the police.
Children are now killing other children and many schoolchildren only dare to leave the house armed. But these are all just “isolated cases”…
Actually, I shouldn’t be able to save myself from requests for self-defense training anymore….but apparently nobody reads the newspaper anymore. -
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