School Shooting in Finland!

[Karhunkoski]

Perhaps we should just ban guns, knives, forks, cars, electric fires, balconies, icey lakes, moose, in fact let's ban anything that has ever killed anyone. Then we are all safe.

and hands, fists, cars, sugar, alcohol, cigarettes, forks, electricity and water.

Or we could just ban the media and go back to the days gone by, where things like this happened (as in people going off the rails), and the news seldom made further than the next village.

It was a terrible thing that happened, don't get me wrong, but it isn't the first and it won't be the last. It is an unfortunate characteristic of humans, occasionally you get an odd one, bit like picking through satsumas in Prisma.

[ScubaGirl]

Perhaps we should just ban guns, knives, forks, cars, electric fires, balconies, icey lakes, moose, in fact let's ban anything that has ever killed anyone. Then we are all safe.

I know you're trying to be cute & sarcastic here, but comparing a gun to any of the other things in your list is just silly and just makes light of a serious situation. Yes, we all know anyone can be killed by ANYTHING, but guns were created for the sole intent to KILL, unlike everything else in your cute list.

I guess it's really no use to debate because gun advocates will never back down from their position and will always find a ridiculous way to justify the right to bear firearms.

[Hank W.]

Ummm... in Finland there is no such "right" to bear firearms. Thats what they have in the 3rd world countries. We, as civilized people have a privilege (that can be given and taken away) to be in possession of firearms (but not walk around with them).

Come to think of it only last week I was thinking of calling up the HSC and ask if they do turning targets as I was contemplating of trying out how far gone I am from my 4+6 combat pistol... I guess I can wait... takes me a dozen magazines not to finch and then I still get the double shots flying all over the target.

[ScubaGirl]

Ummm... in Finland there is no such "right" to bear firearms. Thats what they have in the 3rd world countries.

I wasn't actually referring to the US bill of rights, that's just simply how I phrased my sentence. I thought about it after I posted it and figured someone would nitpick

Btw, thanks for letting me know the usa is a 3rd world country. I never knew I came from the 3rd world. All the more reason not to move back, eh?

[Hank W.]

Well, when you move to Finland there is
1) Nordic
2) EU
3) non-EU
:twisted::lol:

[Rob A.]

OK...

Here's the text of Second Amendment:

"A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."


...this can be, and has been, debated "ad nauseum".... But how can this NOT be interpreted in the context of military service, only?? .... Rather than the right to "blow away" some idiot who cuts you off in traffic??...

[stevoe]

We're not talking about banning anything that can kill someone, but come on guys, do you think that if we banned guns, it would start a whole ban on anything that could kill someone....sometimes I really hate the damm sarcasm that people have, especiallt us british...this isnt the place or time to be sarcastic so shut up for once will you...I mean it. If we let guns get out of control here, we will see a lot more gun related crimes....there's no dought at all about this.......I know we hunt here, so banning them wouldnt happen. Im just thinking about controling them a bit more so it doesnt get like the states...no offence meant to Americans in general...

It's my right to be pissed isn't it....and pissed off....

steve

[Hank W.]

Well, did dunblaine(sp?) change much?

The guy here had applied for a 9mm Glock, but gotten the "barbie model" SigS .22 - IMHO totally irresponsible as a first .22 "target gun" is a bolt-action one. Then again if I'd go in for shooting I'd go for black-powder muzzle-load duel pistols or my military combat shooting, which isn't... hrm... a "competition sport". But even getting to the muzzle-loaders I'd need to start small. I *can't* believe they give a SigS licence! Thats a "saturday nite special" almost...

[Karhunkoski]

Perhaps we should just ban guns, knives, forks, cars, electric fires, balconies, icey lakes, moose, in fact let's ban anything that has ever killed anyone. Then we are all safe.

I know you're trying to be cute & sarcastic here, but comparing a gun to any of the other things in your list is just silly and just makes light of a serious situation. Yes, we all know anyone can be killed by ANYTHING, but guns were created for the sole intent to KILL, unlike everything else in your cute list.

If you look a little closer, you'll see the last one on my list is moose. Moose, which cause quite a few deaths each year here in Finland, not to mention creating a few cripples and paralysed casualties. These figures would of course be much worse if the moose population wasn't controlled (circa 50,000 out of a total population of around 150,000 will be culled this season). So in walks Scuba and wants to start banning guns. So tell us how exactly we are going to prevent moose-related deaths rising? Hunt them down with peashooters?

[stevoe]

Now your arguing about how and who, not about what if....maybe its not an easy reality to understand, but what if it was possible to control guns a bit more, a lot more....it might help

steve

[llewellyn]

Or we could just ban the media and go back to the days gone by, where things like this happened (as in people going off the rails), and the news seldom made further than the next village.

It was a terrible thing that happened, don't get me wrong, but it isn't the first and it won't be the last. It is an unfortunate characteristic of humans, occasionally you get an odd one, bit like picking through satsumas in Prisma.

Well, if the level of crime wouldn't depend on outside circumstances in any way, crime would always exist in equal amounts in all times, societies and social classes. As this is manifestly not true, then the level of crime is actually very dependent on outside circumstances. This doesn't excuse it, but it does explain it to a large degree. Human nature might be unchanging but human circumstances change profoundly and they can be changed profoundly. We can find "conservative" reasons for crime such as too lenient justice system, too few law enforcement officers, too secular values - or "liberal" ones such as ever increasing cuts in social services and youth mental care or the corroding effects of increasingly brutal capitalism on social values and communities etc. etc. We can debate endlessly about the respective importance of these factors, but there really are things we can do to reduce crime and lessen the occurrance of violence in the society. The fact that outside circumstances impact critically the level of crime does not in any way lessen the personal responsibility of the (mentally competent) criminal. The inner defences should work even when the outer ones have failed - but this does not excuse social and political failures, or lessen every citizen's moral duty to do his and her best to make the society a better and safer place.

[Seven]

The guns should be ban for having everyone. It is stupid to be like 200 years ago.
In this days hunting is done by people with some mental problems.
To kill just like that, even all the shops are full with meat. They are slaughterous.
If you want guns go to army and shut as much you want in the air .

[sinikettu]

There will no doubt be a re-think about Finnish gun laws..

http://virtual.finland.fi/stt/showartic ... up=General

The foreign press has had problems again understanding where and what is this place Finland?
Roger Boyes of the Lonodon Times seems to be getting a severe attack from it's Finnish readers..

This is one of the best posts on the Times web site:
"This article is well written in terms of style and form, but utter rubbish in terms of content. You might as well read Harry Potter to find out about yesterday's events in Tuusula,"

http://virtual.finland.fi/stt/showartic ... up=General

[Karhunkoski]

or lessen every citizen's moral duty to do his and her best to make the society a better and safer place.

I totally agree, however efforts to make society a safer place of course need to be balanced with the quality of life afforded to a countrys' citizens, in particular a person's right to pursue his/her (hunting) hobby, drive a car or even visit the avanto! All have the potential to cause death.

All that aside, I think the main gripe I have is knee jerk reactions to events such as this. "Let's ban all guns" is NOT the answer. Look at the UK, where gun legislation has got tighter and tighter over the last 20 years. During the same time, gun crime has risen at an alarming rate. Of course most gun crime in the UK utilises illegal weapons sourced mostly from Eastern Europe. "Banning Guns" isn't going to help with this.

What's needed is:

- Monitoring of school kids by their teachers to try and pick up early warning signs.
- Monitoring by social services of people under their care
- Everyone to make more effort to build a caring society, where kids are not marginalised and left out in the cold. Care and respect for each other starts with things as small as conducting your life with consideration for others, whether you hold a door open for the person behind you or utilise your car indicator to allow other road users to know where you are going.
- Finally, whilst we are all shocked be these recent events, we have to accept that occasionallly random acts of extreme violence will occur, despite any number of safe guards in place. We must realise that humanity has come a bloody long way since warring tribes regularly attempted to wipe out their neighbours. We must realise that life is like air travel, really quite safe, but subject to an occasional disaster. Do we ban air travel? No of course we don't. We put the risks into perspective and balance those risks with "quality of life" issues.

[llewellyn]

All that aside, I think the main gripe I have is knee jerk reactions to events such as this. "Let's ban all guns" is NOT the answer. Look at the UK, where gun legislation has got tighter and tighter over the last 20 years. During the same time, gun crime has risen at an alarming rate. Of course most gun crime in the UK utilises illegal weapons sourced mostly from Eastern Europe. "Banning Guns" isn't going to help with this.

What's needed is:

- Monitoring of school kids by their teachers to try and pick up early warning signs.
- Monitoring by social services of people under their care
- Everyone to make more effort to build a caring society, where kids are not marginalised and left out in the cold. Care and respect for each other starts with things as small as conducting your life with consideration for others, whether you hold a door open for the person behind you or utilise your car indicator to allow other road users to know where you are going.
- Finally, whilst we are all shocked be these recent events, we have to accept that occasionallly random acts of extreme violence will occur, despite any number of safe guards in place. We must realise that humanity has come a bloody long way since warring tribes regularly attempted to wipe out their neighbours. We must realise that life is like air travel, really quite safe, but subject to an occasional disaster. Do we ban air travel? No of course we don't. We put the risks into perspective and balance those risks with "quality of life" issues.

Sure, I do agree, but often there is this other knee-jerk reflex which is to say "oh well, there's nothing we can do, it has always been like this, it is inevitable etc. etc.". I think this kind of unthinking fatalism is even more dangerous than all those silly ideas that base on the fallacy that it would be easy and simple to eliminate all risk from the society (for example by banning video games or internet forums or whatever you have - things that are both impossible to do and ridiculously far from the roots of the problems). Yes, there are many naive suggestions how to eliminate violence root and branch from the society, but it is not naive to believe that there is a lot that can be done better and that also political action can really be effective and meaningful in these matters.