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ANOTHER school shooting in Finland
DarkCrawler
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Registered User regular
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7630969.stm
Nine people dead, at a college.
Seriously...this is starting freak me out a bit.
'Nine dead' in Finland shooting
An estimated 200 students were in the college at the time of the attack
At least nine people have been killed and several others seriously wounded in a shooting spree at a vocational college in Finland, local reports say.
Police said the gunman, thought to be a 20-year-old student, then shot himself although his condition is now unclear.
He was carrying an automatic weapon and wearing a ski mask when he entered the college in Kauhajoki, reports said.
In 2007 eight people died in another school attack. Finland has one of the world's highest gun ownership rates.
In last year's incident, the gunman, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, posted a video on YouTube as a macabre preview of his attack, pledging to "eliminate" those he saw as "unfit".
Ski mask
Tuesday's shootings in Kauhajoki, some 330km (205 miles) north of the capital, Helsinki, began just before 1100 local time (0800 GMT).
An estimated 200 students were thought to be in the college buildings at the time.
A BBC correspondent in Finland said a gunman dressed in black was seen at the school, apparently carrying an automatic weapon.
A man with a ski mask was seen entering the building with a large bag, national broadcaster YLE reported. Shots were fired soon afterwards, and reports emerged that several people were seriously wounded.
At least one injured girl was seen leaving the school covered in blood, our correspondent says, while police said some of the injured were taken away from the scene and treated nearby.
Police ordered an evacuation and called for reinforcements, as local reports said the country's heavy weapons squad was heading to Kauhajoki.
The gunman remained at large within the college grounds for some time before police apparently restrained and disarmed him.
"I just heard from the police radio that the shooter has been caught. He no longer has a gun," a police spokesman told the AFP news agency.
But hospital sources and the mayor of the town were later quoted as saying the attacker had turned his gun on himself. There was no confirmation of his condition.
In the wake of the 2007 attack, Finland's government pledged to raise the minimum age for buying guns after Auvinen's attack. But the country has a long tradition of hunting and weapons-bearing, with about 1.6 million firearms in private hands, the Associated Press reports.
Nine people dead, at a college.
Seriously...this is starting freak me out a bit.
DarkCrawler on
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wait, Finland?
Finland Finland Finland, the place I'd quite like to be?
Whether this thread should be about that is, well, another matter entirely.
(If it does, I'm advocating the Swiss system again)
Quite messed up to be honest people, hope this doesn't lower the bar for another school shootings here. Also feels like the shootings are just coming closer and closer, hope it won't be our school next.
At schools? I thought we Americans cornered the market at that.
You're definitely in the lead on overall numbers, but I don't know about rates, so I'm refraining from 'X country are worse for it' style arguments. I'm just trying to figure out when massacres got so much more common in the nordic nations that we needed a thread title that comes across as exasperated.
Americans NEVER heard about school shootings in other countries, and now there have been two within a year in one country? This is like big news for us.
Ok, but the news is actually "your media are incredibly insular and really really don't pay much attention to stuff going on in other countries unless there's explosions and gunfire involved, or sex".
Sure we did. Shootings in Scotland, Australia, Finland and Israel all made national news.
So I would certainly say this is big news as two school shootings within a year in a developed country strikes me as pretty rare.
If they did I haven't heard of them.
the australian one he's most likely referring to was in '96, the scottish one even further back so thats not really surprising.
Okay I'm talking the last 10 years when the 'school shooting' thing just seemed to explode into all media outlets.
Monash University isn't a school?
the one we were discussing was port arthur. Only 2 people died at monash university, I wouldn't have thought that would've got US media attention.
edit: beaten
I don't think that qualifies as news, Cat. Nobody's gotten naked.
To be honest, I'm surprised there aren't more school shootings. School (especially high school and college) is the source of greatest stress for most people. They're filled with tired, overworked, stressed students who have to deal with failures (whether academic, athletic, social or otherwise). Add that to the fact that young people haven't always developed their mental capabilities for long-term planning or awareness of consequences.
That said, though, good luck to those affected in Finland.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Another?
Yes another as in exactly one more.
Finns have just as much access as Americans to guns if not more I would say--so sociologically might you say that the phenomenon of school shootings is spreading because of some sort of international awakening to the concept among disenchanted youth, and not some new gun ownership statistic?
Okay yes and those are good measures but how do they prevent an incident like this? Should our focus be on preventing a once in a lifetime incident?
I think the focus of gun control statistics needs to be on crime of the more usual nature. People with a death wish are hard to beat.
I'm sorry, but ...WHAT? You're surprised that children and youth don't go on shooting sprees more often, because, that's like a totally expected way to deal with stress? Or because "underdeveloped mental capabilities" mean you're unable to realize the effects of killing a bunch of dudes? Would you please elaborate why the FUCK would you be surprised because there is a total logical black hole between "stress & not mature enough" to "I'm in so much pain I'll kill a bunch of dudes and shoot myself in the head".
Also yeah, the another in the title implied frequency and I didn't care for it either. As far as I know, such an event is yet to happen in 95% of European countries.
To the first question, my answer is: you don't.
To the second: No, unless there are towers involved, it seems.
I mean, school shooters are dicks. But man, what a total fucking dick that guy was.
Did you mean to say "towers AND about 3000 dead civilians"? Because I think that's something to get excited about, but I might be an outlier. Also, those particular towers were attacked twice in my lifetime, so .... yeah.
With regard to school shootings, it seems like a healthy dose of supervision would make for an adequate deterrent. Not necessarily "state supervision" in the form of "oh yeah, well then we'll just take all your damn guns away!", but more like parental supervision in the form of keeping guns out of the hands of kids, even Finnish ones.
Also, that.
"school shooting" to most people means pupil(s) shooting other pupils, so that's important to bear in mind, yeah. I can't think of a school shooting in that vein ever having taken place in the UK. So yes, it is right to say "another" in the thread title - they're rare.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if someone wants to do something bad, they'll find a way to do it.
No, the UK has very reasonable and sensible gun laws.
I thought random stabbings, while maybe not at schools, was a huge problem for the whole country right now?
The problem is gangs of youths fighting each other and pulling knives, not just stabbing people at random.
And considering this thread is specifically about violence at schools then no it wouldn't be worth mentioning anyway.
How is that a controversial observation? Teens kill each other all the time. They just happen to be brown-skinned and in a gang so it doesn't make the news.
School massacres are neither a new nor a uniquely American phenomena. One of the worst ever was in 1927, and there was a horrible incident where a shell-shocked WWII vet took a flamethrower to children . . . in europe. . . in the 60s.
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