- Title: FINLAND: Finnish hunter says school shooting not caused by gun laws
- Date: 25th September 2008
- Summary: (EU) KURIKKA, FINLAND (SEPTEMBER 24, 2008) (REUTERS) HUNTER REINO HAANPAA TAKING RIFLE OUT OF CAR BOOT HUNTING LODGE AND HUNTING GROUNDS (SOUNDBITE) (Finnish) HUNTER, REINO HAANPAA, SAYING: "The majority of gun owners in Kurikka are hunters and we have very careful controls and mandatory shooting practice before anyone is allowed in the hunt."
- Embargoed: 10th October 2008 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Finland
- Country: Finland
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
- Reuters ID: LVA5891EUBIVHRHFENN1SA7E5N4A
- Story Text: As Finland reconsiders its gun laws following its second school shooting in a year, one hunter says the problem is not with regulation, but that many people don't abide by the rules already in place.
Finland was forced on Wednesday (September 24) to not only reconsider its gun laws, but to look at gun culture in the country as a whole, after a gunman killed 10 people at a school in western Finland.
Twenty-two-year-old student Matti Saari killed nine fellow students and one male staff member at the vocational school in Kauhajoki on Tuesday (September 23), before turning the gun on himself. He died later of a head wound in Tampere University Hospital.
The shooting was a fresh shock for the Nordic country, still reeling from a similar massacre last November.
Then, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot eight people dead before killing himself -- an act that like Saari's was telegraphed by menacing video clips on YouTube.
On Wednesday, Finnish media focused heavily on how police, alerted to Saari's videos, questioned him on Monday (September 22) but did not confiscate the gun. Journalists also questioned how Saari got a gun in the first place, and whether Finland's gun laws needed to be tightened.
On Tuesday (September 23) Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said Finland should consider banning private handguns altogether.
But one Finnish hunter, Reino Haanpaa, said the problem was not with gun laws, but rather with those who don't abide by the controls in place.
"The majority of gun owners in Kurikka are hunters and we have very careful controls and mandatory shooting practice before anyone is allowed in the hunt," he said.
Gun culture has a strong tradition in Finland.
"I own a lot of guns that have been my father's or my brother's, and they are passed on in the family as an inheritance. And we take excellent care of the guns, often better than our wives," Haanpaa said as he showed off his hunting trophies at his ranch in Kurikka, near Kauhajoki where Saari had lived.
"There should be some new form of control when a young man gets a gun. There could be 2 or 3 years that they could only use it with adults, they could not use them alone. And why give semiautomatic or automatic guns to young people. They do not need to be able to shoot several times in a row," he added.
Gun ownership in Finland is among the highest in the world, but crime rates are low. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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