Finland's Gun Culture Facing New Questions (2024)

The right to bear arms is deeply ingrained in Finnish culture, and gun clubs are a social fixture. West Shooters, located in an old bunker a few blocks from Helsinki's luxury shopping streets, counts 300 regular members and is a popular place for bachelor parties and corporate events.

"Finnish people have always respected their guns," said Petri Oinonen, a member of the club who also sells firearms at a gun shop across town. "This was a very rural country until World War II. In every family, there was a gun or two because they were needed."

In Finland, there are an estimated 56 guns for every 100 people, according to the Small Arms Survey, a research organization based in Switzerland. That figure is higher than for any other countries except the United States and Yemen. In comparison with those two nations, however, Finland has largely avoided the bloodshed and crime associated with firearms, at least until this week.

Now, news that an 18-year-old used one of the country's easily available handguns to kill eight people in a suburban high school less than an hour's drive north of here has some Finns wondering if the country's gun laws should be tightened.

But people at the firing range suggested things wouldn't change much. Markku Alhanen, the manager, said licensing requirements should include a mental-health background check. Members at his club monitor such things informally, he said, keeping a close eye on fellow members and quickly reporting any unusual behavior. "That sort of guy would have been noticed here, and somebody would have said something to the police," he said.

A day after the shooting in Tuusula, police released new details of the crime that suggested the young shooter contemplated a much bloodier massacre than he managed to carry out. They cited evidence that he tried but failed to set the building on fire and walked through the halls with nearly 400 rounds of ammunition.

Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot each of his victims in the head or upper body with a .22-caliber Sig Sauer Mosquito pistol as he roamed the three floors of the yellow lakeside high school, investigators said. After spraying a burst of gunfire into the cafeteria, Auvinen ended the blood bath in an adjoining restroom, where he aimed at his own skull the last bullet he fired, police said.

Finnish authorities said they were able to reconstruct what transpired during the approximately 30-minute rampage at the Jokela secondary school, but exactly what prompted Auvinen to kill six classmates, his principal and the school nurse remained unclear.

Police said they were closely examining hundreds of Internet missives and images created by Auvinen, including a graphic YouTube video that he posted the day before the attack in which he spelled out plans to carry out a mass killing at the school.

"I have no mercy for the scum of the earth, the pathetic human race," he said in the video, which was removed from the Web site hours after the shooting. "Hate, I'm so full of it and I love it. That is one thing I really love."

Investigators said he came from an "ordinary" family and had no criminal record. "He's clearly a lonely person who held strong anger against society and very radical thoughts," Jan-Olof Nyholm, detective chief superintendent for the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, said after a news conference.

Another clue came in the form of a suicide note that Auvinen left at home. Police said it included goodbyes to his family and antisocial commentary but would not reveal its contents otherwise.

Investigators said that he did not appear to single out his targets in advance and that they had no relation to one other. "It appears the victims were chosen at random," said chief inspector Tero Haapala.

But there were some patterns evident. Five victims were male students between 16 and 18 years old. Witnesses reported that Auvinen barged into some classrooms for younger children, shouting "Revolution! Smash everything!" but left without injuring anyone.

No girls were shot, police said, correcting earlier accounts that two victims were female students. The three females were all adults: the 61-year-old principal, the 42-year-old school nurse and a 25-year-old woman taking classes at the school.

Authorities said a student made the first emergency call to report the attack at 11:44 a.m. Patrol cars arrived 11 minutes later. Officers soon spotted Auvinen and urged him to surrender, but he responded with gunshots. Investigators said the last shots rang out at 12:04 p.m.

Police said they didn't return fire and remained outside the school for an unspecified amount of time because they were worried the shooter had taken hostages. They didn't find Auvinen on the bathroom floor until 1:53 p.m.

Crime scene photos showed the cafeteria's glass doors pierced by bullet holes, with half-eaten trays of pasta abandoned on tables inside. Technicians recovered 69 shell casings and found 320 rounds of unused ammunition in a bag.

At some point, detectives said, Auvinen poured 1.5 liters, or about three pints, of a flammable liquid on the floors and walls in one section of the building, but failed to ignite a blaze.

In the pitch-black of Thursday evening, hundreds of glass jars with flickering candles lit up the shoreline of the small lake outside the Jokela school. People laid bouquets of roses and scribbled poems on muddy ground in front of the building.

"It's unbelievable that something like this can happen here," said Jaana Kivistoe, a 40-year-old mother, her eyes wet with tears. "I don't see how a small town like this can ever really recover."

Students wondered how they would cope next week, when the school is expected to reopen. "It won't be easy to go back," said Noora Sanden, 14.

She and two friends from her eighth-grade Swedish-language class recalled how they thought Wednesday's chaos was part of an emergency drill. "We thought it was a joke until we made it outside," she said.

At the West Shooters Club, some members said they weren't completely surprised by Wednesday's massacre -- not because of Finland's large stock of weapons, but because of a perceived rise in antisocial behavior among teenagers, who spend hours alone in front of their computers and away from their families.

"There has always been talk in our society that this could happen, that someday there would be a school shooting," said Oinonen, 36. "Maybe this is not the last one. It might give other people some ideas."