Gun Law
Finland mulls tougher gun law after school massacre
The Finnish government is giving serious thought to significantly tightening its gun law, as the Nordic country still reels from the shock of its second school shooting in less than a year.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said Tuesday that Finland should consider banning private handguns altogether and he expected a lively debate on gun control, Finnish News Agency STT reported.
"It goes without saying that one must analyze carefully what has happened and what sorts of changes may serve to prevent these kinds of situations from happening," he told a press conference.
"We have to tighten the law significantly," he added.
Vanhanen's remarks came after a Finnish student killed 10 people before shooting himself in a school rampage Tuesday.
The shooting occurred just before 11 a.m. local time (0800 GMT),when the gunman, wearing a ski mask and carrying a bag, opened fire at students taking an exam at his trade school in the westerntown of Kauhajoki, about 300 km northwest of the capital Helsinki.
The gunman killed 10 people and burned some of their bodies before shooting himself in the head. He died in hospital several hours after the carnage.
Police said the 22-year-old shooter, identified as Matti Saari, was a trainee chef at the vocational college and had a licence for a .22-calibre handgun.
He left two handwritten messages at the school dormitory saying he had been planning the attack since 2002 and that he hated the human race, according to police.
Before the shooting, he posted several video clips on YouTube, a popular video website, in which a "Mr. Saari" fires several shots with a handgun. Though removed after the accident, the clips had already been downloaded by some viewers.
In the clips made five days before the shooting, Saari said he loved computers, weapons, sex and beer.
Finland's Interior Minister, Anne Holmlund, said police had questioned Saari after seeing the posted clips but then let him go and did not take away his weapon because they thought he was not dangerous.
"The detective who handled the case did not think that the circumstances were such that they required a confiscation of the weapon or a withdrawal of the license," Holmlund said.
She said the man had received his gun permit in August and a probe into the incident was being launched.
Tuesday's massacre was the country's second deadly school shooting in less than a year. In November 2007, an 18-year-old boy killed eight pupils and staff at his upper secondary school in Jokela in southern Finland before turning the gun on himself.
The two school killings shared some similarities as both shooters posted violent videos on YouTube prior to the shootings, both had licenses for the handgun they used in the killings, and both were interested in guns and violence according to their profiles posted on the Internet.
After the school rampage in Jokela, the government had promised to raise the minimum age for buying guns from 15 to 18. However, the measure has not been passed yet.
Finland has the world's third highest gun ownership per capita, after the United States and Yemen, according to the report of the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey in 2007.
(Published by Xinhua - September 24, 2008)