Three twelve-year-olds were injured in a shooting in Finland, in a school in the city of Vantaa, north of the capital Helsinki, the fourth largest city in the country with around 240,000 inhabitants. The shooter was one of their peers. The police, according to the BBC, said they had intervened in the incident which occurred at the school Viertola before 9am on Tuesday 2 April. Residents of the area have been invited to stay at home and students, aged between 5 and 15, not to move from their classrooms.
The boy who allegedly shot fled but was arrested shortly after shooting at his school 800 students and 90 employees. The suspect was arrested on the other side of a local river, in a neighborhood north of Helsinki.
Finland saw two fatal school shootings in the space of a few months in 2007 and 2008: in the first case an 18-year-old student killed seven students and his principal in the city of Tuusula, in the second another boy killed nine students and a teacher in the city of Kauhajoki.
«The day started off horribly. There was a shooting at the Viertola school in Vantaa. I imagine the pain and concern of many families at this time. The suspected attacker has been caught” wrote the minister Mari Rantanen on X.
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These facts led to a tightening of gun laws in a country that has 430,000 licensed gun owners in a population of 5.5 million, according to government statistics. There is no limit to the number of guns you can own and the Home Office says there are more than 1.5 million in circulation. Since 2010, a psychological test has been required for those applying for a gun license and the age limit for applications has been raised from 18 to 20 years.
In 2023 there have been ten mass shootings in Europe with 52 victims and 74 injured. In the USA, in the same year, according to the site's data Gun Violence Archivethere are 656 mass shootings. The last case in Europe dates back to December, at the University of Prague in which there were 14 deaths plus Stanislav, the father of David Kozak, the man who shot, and two other people, as well as twenty-five wounded. During the year there were mass shootings in England, Georgia, Portugal, Germany and two each in Serbia and the Netherlands.
Source: Vanity Fair
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