US Elections | Did Tim Walz give too rosy a picture of Finland? HS reviewed the candidates’ Finland claims

Finnish suddenly became a topic of conversation during the debate held between Tuesday and Wednesday night during the exam for the vice presidential candidates of the United States.

As well as the Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz that the Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance presented arguments about Finland in the exchange of words.

We found out if there was substance in the candidates’ speeches.

Claim 1. Walz: “This does not happen in Finland”

Walz’s argument can be interpreted in two ways. Walz’s speech could be interpreted as saying that school shootings do not happen in Finland at all. That’s not true.

The first school shooting in Finland took place in 1989 at Raumamere high school, when a 14-year-old student shot two of his classmates.

The school shootings in Jokela in 2007 and Kauhajoki in 2008 are certainly remembered in Finland. In the school attack in Kuopio in 2019, the perpetrator used a bladed weapon instead of a firearm.

During the current year, at Viertola school in Vantaa, one 12-year-old student of the school died and two others were fatally injured after a student of the same age shot them.

In addition, a 23-year-old woman from Vaasa reportedly planned a school shooting in March at the Isonkyrö school center, but came to second thoughts in the last moments.

I waltz the comment can also be interpreted in another way. He referred to Finland in the middle of a discussion about the wave of gun violence sweeping the United States, which also includes the more common school shootings.

If you interpret Walz’s comment as referring to this broader phenomenon of the prevalence of violence in schools, he is right.

In Finland, school shootings are very rare, while in the United States there are school shootings news channel CNN including at least 50 this year alone. According to CNN, 24 people have been killed and 66 injured in these shootings.

Claim 2. Walz: “There are a lot of gun owners in Finland”

According to the Ministry of the Interior, there are approximately 460,000 gun license holders and slightly less than 1.5 million licensed weapons in Finland. Thus, it is estimated that slightly more than eight percent of Finns own a gun.

In the United States, it is difficult to estimate the exact number of firearms, because no accurate statistics are kept on the number of guns anywhere.

by the Pew Research Center in a survey conducted in the summer of 2023 four in ten Americans said they live in a household with a gun.

In 2018, the Swiss Small Arms Survey research project estimated that Finland would be in the world eighth most guns per population. At that time, the Swiss project estimated that Finnish civilians would have approximately 32.4 firearms per hundred Finns.

The Small Arms Survey made its calculations based on the estimate that Finnish civilians would have just under 1.8 million firearms, of which approximately 250,000 would be unregistered. However, the police and the Ministry of the Interior have said that they consider the research institute’s estimate to be exaggerated.

In the same 2018 survey, the United States was in the top spot, where it was estimated that there were approximately 120 civilian-owned guns per hundred inhabitants.

Walz’s statement therefore corresponds to reality. Finland actually has quite a lot of gun owners compared to the population, although not as many as in the United States.

Statement 3. Vance: There are much more mental health problems in the United States than in Finland

Vance’s claim is quite broad.

According to the IHME (Institute For Health Metrics and Evaluation) in 2021, mental health disorders were experienced by slightly more than 15.5 percent of the population in Finland, while the corresponding number in the United States was 18.1.

However, the institute itself states that there are large differences between countries in the availability and quality of data, meaning that the reliability of the statistics cannot be considered certain.

According to US health officials, it is estimated that more than one-fifth of US adults live with some form of mental illness.

In Finland, the mental health promotion organization Mieli ry says that 20–25 percent suffer from mental health disorders each year. According to the Institute of Health and Welfare, at least around 20–25 percent of young people suffer from mental health problems.

Based on statistics, it is not possible to reliably determine which country has more mental health problems. However, it seems like an exaggeration to say that there are much more mental health problems in the United States than in Finland.

Claim 4. Vance: There is much more substance abuse in the United States than in Finland

When talking about the abuse of substances, the focus turns to deaths caused by substances. According to Statistics Finland, a total of 250 people died from drugs in Finland in 2022.

According to the US Department of Health, there were nearly 108,000 overdose deaths in the United States in 2022.

If you relate the figures to the population, there were slightly more than four drug deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in Finland, while the corresponding number in the United States was 32.

According to Statistics Finland, almost 1,700 people died in Finland from alcohol-related diseases and alcohol poisoning in 2022.

According to the U.S. Department of Health, more than 178,000 people die each year in the United States from causes related to excessive alcohol use.

Relative to the population, in Finland, alcohol-related deaths were recorded at around 30 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, while the corresponding number in the United States was almost 53.

Thus, Vance would seem to have been right that substance abuse actually occurs more in the United States than in Finland. On the other hand, everyone can judge for themselves how big this difference is.