The attack on a school in Finland: an isolated event in the EU country with the most firearms per inhabitant

The shooting this Tuesday at a school in the Helsinki metropolitan area, in which a 12-year-old boy killed a classmate and injured two others, has reignited the debate about firearms in Finland. The attack on the Vantaa school has shocked the Nordic country, the member of the European Union with the most rifles, shotguns and pistols per inhabitant, and is reminiscent of the shootings in two schools, in 2007 and 2008, which caused almost 20 deaths and the tightening legislation on the possession and use of weapons.

Firearms abound in Finland. Hundreds of thousands of Finns are fond of hunting, especially in the north of the country. There are also many citizens who practice sports shooting, which has several modalities with deep roots in northern Europe. According to the Small Arms Survey, a research project by the Institute of Higher International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva, the Nordic country is the seventh in the world, and the first in the EU, with the most firearms in relation to its population. (32.4 per 100 inhabitants), only surpassed by the United States, Yemen, Montenegro, Serbia, Canada and Uruguay.

Despite the large number of weapons, mass shootings (those that cause at least four victims) are very unusual in Finland, where fewer than a dozen have taken place in the last century. And until Tuesday, there had never been a fatal firearms incident in which the attacker and victims were so young: all 12 years old.

School shootings were at the center of Finnish political debate 15 years ago. In less than 12 months, two massacres in student centers forced the rulers to take action. In September 2008, a young man shot dead 10 people, before committing suicide, at a vocational training center. At the end of the previous year, a student had murdered eight classmates at a secondary school. In both cases, the attackers legally possessed the firearm they used.

A law passed in 2011 raised the minimum age to own firearms from 18 to 20, but those over 15 can still obtain permits to use pistols or shotguns registered in the name of a family member. Since then, applicants must pass an aptitude test and doctors have to alert any patient with a weapons license who they consider may pose a danger.

After the tightening of gun ownership requirements, there have been no school shootings as serious as those more than 15 years ago. Even so, in 2012 a young man shot several classmates with a shotgun at a school, although without causing fatalities. And shortly after, two incidents with knives took place in educational centers in the north of the country, in which a student died and four people were injured.

Mental health

This Tuesday's shooting in Vantaa, of which many details are still unknown, has also reopened the debate on bullying and the mental health of students in a country considered the happiest in the world by the UN and with an education system perceived as exemplary by other EU members.

Visibly moved, the Finnish Prime Minister, Petteri Orpo, promised at a press conference that the authorities will carry out a thorough investigation of the tragedy and assured that, following the conclusions, his Government will address the problem of school violence. “It is very clear that too many young people, up to one in three, have suffered from mental health problems at some point. We have to be able to intervene sooner,” Orpo said.

The Director General of the Finnish Police, Seppo Kolehmainen, pointed out that different types of threats against schools are detected almost every week, and that officers sometimes have to patrol schools to maintain security. “We have collectively thought that, as a society, we have learned from previous school shootings, but a day like this should never have happened,” Kolehmainen said. In mid-March, police arrested a 23-year-old woman who intended to attack the University of Vaasa, in the west of the country. The young woman was arrested after posting a video on social media in which she mentioned her plans. The agents found a firearm and several cartridges in her home.

In Finland there are more than 1.6 million registered firearms, and almost half a million people have licenses to own them (there is no limit to the number of pistols, rifles or shotguns a single person can own). According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in the last five years Finland has had a firearm homicide rate of 0.14 per 100,000 inhabitants, a statistic similar to that of Spain, France or Italy, and four times less than that of Sweden.

Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.

_