IAP Political Forum

I was surprised that a thread based on this incident hasn't been posted yet. For those in doubt, this goes to show that school shootings are not just confined to America and this one ended with the same result as VT: the killer kills himself.

Psychopaths can be found in all countries.

And of course, before anyone else mentions it, Finland is a country with 41-69 (low and high estimates) guns per 100 residents (Small Arms Survey 2007). Highest among european countries in the study.

In general, shooting sprees are not that rare outside of US, there were some in schools before (I remember Germany a few years ago) and a lot more of in domestic disputes. Today in Croatia, a 40 year old man killed 5 other family members, including a 7 year old and a 2 month old child.

Just a piece of data...

Finland has got the 3rd highest ratio of guns per citizen in the world, behind USA and Canada, although its gun laws are far more restrictive than those of the countries above.

Which two countries are above, because apparently gun laws had no effect on this kid just like they had no effect on other school killers.

It's just another story of a loonie. It has nothing to do with guns and the need for more gun control. The facts are gun control makes things worse.

Good summary.


This is not a fact. The problem with guns vs. control is that every country is a specific case. Solutions that reduce abuse of guns (hm... that is probably not the right expression) in one country will not work in all other countries. Can we agree on that?

There are two points I would like to consider...

First, the more guns there are, the easier is to get a gun. And the more nutbags there are, the easier it is that nutbag gets a gun and becomes a shooter. Nto controlling guns and not controlling nutbags jsut calls for having lors of armed nutbags causing lots of shootings.

Second, culture factors. The nutbag is influenced by the culture where he lives in. If your culture says thta shooting at people is a way to resolve certain situations, logically that's what you will think to do... even if the "situation" are all the idiots despising you at school. This may sound rough, but give it all the fine detail you want to and sitll it holds water: in the USA, shooting at people is a part of culture (self-defense, 2nd ammendment)much more than it is in India or in European countries. And so you have a culture that loves guns and which includes shooting at people as acceptable behavior(the bad guys, of course, but the message is "shoot at them" nonetheless), and that culture is in a country with the highest murder rate in developed countries. A country where murder by firearms alone is twice the amount of all murder by any mean in the civilized world. It is twice as likely to be shot dead in the USA as to be murdered at all in any other developed country! And yet where si the difference?

Is in amount of guns? Not so much.
Is in tolerance of guns? Yes, but tighter controls can't prevent nutbags from gettign guns (specially if there are lots of guns)
Is violence in pop culture? Not, as American pop culture with violence is exported abroad.
Is in crime rate? Violent crime in the USA is not significantly higher than in other developed countries (murder prevalence accounted)
And what about culture? Ah, the differences here are meaningful.

So maybe is that... not guns, or laws, or even nutbags... but the very "gun violence culture" in the USA. "Have a problen? Shoot at it". For some reason, that occurs far easily to American than to any other citizen in the developed countries. And the reason must be in the USA themselves. Maybe, I suggest, is the attitude towards guns... ???

So it's America's fault this kid shot up a school and then killed himself? It's our fault he posted his video on YouTube?

If i was living in such a boring place like Finland i would shoot ppl as well,,, youngsters in there can do 2 things :

1.take heroin
2.play pc games,,,

nothing more,,, some combine both,, they pass some first person shooter game with all possible medals and then buy a gun and take it to another level,,,

what else would you do if you were living in place with 24/7 snow and ppl with dumb faces

Ahh, Finland. Home of the craziest death metal you've ever heard and has more Satanists per capita then any other country. In other words, my retirement home.

I think we are all missing the point, the crazy young man got the cajones to do it from YouTube. That seems to be the point of the article.

Snowboarding?

So, YouTube creates killers?

Guns don't kill people, You Tube kills people. Print the t-shirts, people!

i don't think Fins like Yanks much,,, but yes Fins probably the craziest musicians in the world (any type of music),,, which brings us back to their childhood,,, pacman and heroin

Well he posted his plans on Youtube, I'm not sure what that means, a music video? He obviously wanted to share his passion for... whatever he posted.

youTube got sued from any possible place, even my work place does sue it for stealing rights,,, few dead Fins don't ring a bell when Sony got your arse tight,,,

Pacman and heroin. Haha. So that's what creates black metal...

Seriously though, most of them say it's because of their history of Christianity. Pick up the dvd "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey". A lot of good interviews from the leading black metal artists are in there.

You should practice your reading skills. :o

How you read "USA caused tragedy in Finland!" when I was saying "USA causes tragedies in USA!", is beyond my understanding... ???

I've met 30 old Fin woman in Israeli army, she told me that the reason she asked to join Israeli army was that she believes that Fins are 13 Israelite tribe,,, then she told me that her brother is  ex Nazi ,,, I don't know what kind of fungus was that but if i ever get cancer or other not nice disease i would try one of those before the tunnel lights fade,,,

Somehow I doubt he wanted to share his passion....

He wanted to prove a point to take Harry Potter looking geeks on youTube seriously,,, interesting thing is his logic falls apart,,, if he is superior to other Fins, how come he wants to be first to commit mass murder in school aka being different than masses,,

hahah this is probably what his first target said,,, what a miserable fock

Do you think he would have still gone through with it if he was unable to brag about it on YouTube? Probably, but you never know. School shootings are an American thing, but now, an American born thing.

Only to a certain extent. You can look at say the US vs Canada. Canada doesn't have near the issues with gun violence that the US does. Michael Moore went on a rampage about that in his film. But if you do the research, you'll see that when they enacted more gun control laws, violence increased. The same applies for the US even though they have had very different experiences with gun violence.

This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while

I hope I didn't read this right.

By the logic of "school shootings are an American thing," then we can also assume that violence and ignorance is also an American thing and an American-born thing. A school shooting or massacre anywhere is still a massacre, be it in America or Finland or Japan or wherever.

Please. Besides terrorist incidents in other countries by people not going to the school, in what other country has a student of the school come into the school and shot other students? When and where? It's an American thing and apparently it's spreading.

Yeah, I caught the massacre bug as a kid, but it passed. Maybe one of our animals was aboard an overseas ship and carried it over there. Or maybe somebody with the massacre flu was inadvertently allowed to fly and brought it.

Or maybe this whole idea of American shootings being "spread" is retarded.

I love the way everyone blames YouTube despite there being no causal link between using YouTube and shooting a bunch of people but yet they deny the connection between the easy availability of guns and shooting a bunch of people.

Clutching at straws...

Erfurt, 2002 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Steinh%C3%A4user)
Melbourne, 2002 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting)

2002 is long after Columbine, and Columbine wasn't even the first.

I'm not saying YouTube causes people to randomly become mass murdering psychopaths. I am saying, that if you feel disillusioned, depressed, and generally like a teenager, with a ton of anger boiling underneath and you're having feelings of wanting to shoot everyone around you, watching and idolizing those who came before is probably what you're going to do. And what better place than YouTube?

Wow. I've never seen a more absurd question. I'll take this time to prove you wrong...

In Scotland, March 1996

In Japan, June 2001

And those are just two incidents, here's a list of other incidents NOT happening in North America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:School_massacres_outside_North_America

Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#List_of_school_shootings

Find me one before 1966.

Hold up - why does that even matter?

So what if our school shootings set a precedent? The kids that shoot up schools now would have just shot up malls and shit like that. The only thing different is the venue, and when said venue is a school, we all cry and open our mouths like a makes a difference.

Dates are irrelevant. A school massacre that happened in another country 20 years ago is still a school massacre, nonetheless.

Dunblane, Scotland in 1996
Sanaa, Yemen in 1997
Alberta, Canada in 1999
Veghel, Netherlands in 1999
Branneburg, Germany in 2000
Jan, Sweden in 2001
Freising, Germany in 2002

I could go on and on. But it seems you wanted things from before 2002. You're spewing nonsense.

EDIT: Nevermind, looks like someone already posted a link

Totino majority of shootings are in US,,, let's say 95% of cases are in US... which makes 2112 right about what she saying.
Same goes with serial killers BTW,,,

Answer is simple you cult such acts by making movies and showing it all over media,,, if you wouldn't those society freak teens who want attention would think twice if they want to shoot someone get no attention and their body be thrown in garbage instead of being buried...

How about mushroom and berry picking?
I was very surprised to find out how many people in the Scandinavian countries are addicted to heroin. I thought these places were the number one countries to live on Eart (health, air quality, crime, etc...)

Not quite 95%, more like 75%. And on another note, school shootings and massacres are not an American thing, they can and have happened all over the world and how often they happen doesn't make them American either. Do all those volcanic eruptions worldwide make eruptions a non-American thing?

Volcanic eruption worldwide make US country with less volcanic mountains in comparison to central America... likewise high percentage of serial killers and school shooting in US make regular US citizen a wacko,,,

it doesn't make US founder of those things but definitely a homeland for those cults

You need to work on your math skills as franklin pointed out. But again, you can't prove this is some how related to America. It isn't. You're an illogical thinker if you say things like that.

It's originally an American thing, unless you can find something from another country before 1966. And no, it doesn't matter, but I bring it up because the fact that these kids can share their killings and plannings on YouTube makes it more appealing to other psychopaths out there who revere the idiots who have done it.

An American thing? People have been killing eachother since the beginning of Time. And to go even further, Youtube wasn't even created until 2005. The majority of killings in other countries happened BEFORE 2005.

Maybe it wasn't Hitlers fault for killing all of those Jews. We should probably blame the Romans for comitting the first known Genocide back in 146 BC. Damn Romans!

Totino,,, my math is just fine you and your mic friend never heard of percentage this ain't your fault though,,, IF you want real numbers take US population and rest of the World population with number of in school shootings occurance rates,,,

you will end up with numbers,,, what you saying is illogical because noone claims US responsible for this very shooting but we just saying it's popular in US,,, same as youtube and other things that create those cults of suicide students

Learn to read. Youtube was created in 05. Most school shootings took place BEFORE 2005. So no, your youtube reasoning is false. And just to prove you cannot do math, according to the link above there have been 51 shootings. 15 of them took place in other countries. That breaks down to almost 70% in the US.... Not the 99% you claim. Go back to elementary school.

suggesting me to learn to read can be applied to you as i've said 95% and not 99%,,, youtube is American hype,,, expose yourself in such website is American thing,,, most of Web 2.0 monsters like youtube are American,,,

most important you don't know math and fail to read,,, this is quite a disability for moderator of forums

You state I can't do math, yet you were off 25%. Good call buddy. Go back to preschool.

Again with the youtube huh? What don't you understand about MOST OF THE SHOOTINGS HAPPENED BEFORE YOUTUBE WAS INVENTED? This is a Carlos Mencia DEE DEE DEE moment, brought to you by 14 year old jane.

Okay, maybe I should use this example. Genocide has happened in Africa so does that make genocide an African thing? Terrorism is committed by Russians and Islamic people, so does that make terrorism a Russian or Islamic thing?


Apparently from this logic, no one has ever gone into a school and killed before up until the middle of the 20th century, which I know is completely untrue. As for YouTube, the only thing we can blame them for is not taking the video down, otherwise they had nothing to do with the shooting.

First of all, I never said killing/murder, I said school shootings. But to distinguish the idea further, what I should have said was a student bringing weapons into a school establishment in the supposedly civilized 21st Century, as is covered by major media outlets in the 24/7 news era. YouTube is just part of the media now, because it's accessable by the entire world.

Is a school shooting supposed to be worse than a normal murder?
And to distinguish further, nothing that you have presented proves any US responsibility in school shootings.

And also I find the "civilized 21st century" argument that is being used here and that has been used in other threads to be nonsense.

I wasn't saying the U.S. is responsible, and it's somewhat difficult for an entire country to be responsible anyway. It's the dumbasses in America who started it.

And all death is death, but that aside, you shouldn't have to worry about your child being in a danger zone when they go to a learning establishment. At least not here at this point in time, and not in Finland.

I seriously doubt America started the first school massacres ever.

You can doubt all you want, but it doesn't matter. America has made school shootings its own whether or not it 'started' here. What we are talking about are disaffected youth who feel alienated and even picked on for not being normal, and as a result go shooting other innocent students and school faculty members. We're not talking about terrorists or guerillas or children who have grown up around violence in order to survive, we're talking about American teenagers going on rampages, or 'going postal' if you will. And obviously its not isolated. For an adult to do it at a place of work after they look back at their life and realize it sucks is to be expected, but for a child to do something like that is horrible. And it's only made worse when children can spread their insidious intentions over the internet, gaining support and status knowing that they will die in the incident they are planning. Children are already too easily influenced by all of the culture they are bombarded with through the television, internet and other various sources. Americans have every opportunity, they don't have to be violent to survive, and could live a comfortable life even in poverty. And yet they would do something like this, it makes you wonder why they would throw away a perfectly fine life. They are obviously affected by something to such a degree that they would take it out on innocent people where they are supposed to be learning and bettering their life. Instead they look at it as a terrible place to endlessly harp on the establishment and feel sorry for themselves because some kids take themselves too seriously and do not approve of these social misfits. Anyhow, that is what is American about it. The fact that suburban punks who have so much opportunity would do something so horrible. And now it's happening in other countries, by other students who are posting about it on the internet. Did those children in finland have the opportunity to live a civilized life? Yes. Did they throw it all away for self-centered anger? Yes. It's the same.

Maybe but the only reason for that is because the media blows it up.


No, it's no different for an adult or a child. They know what they are doing and it's just as bad.


But that is on their own accord, even though there are those who could've taken down their plans beforehand.


Maybe the parents should try talking to them about that?


Actually everyone in this world has every opportunity to not be violent in order to survive, why single out just Americans like they're the only violent people in the world?


Again, maybe the parents should try and help out? Or if it is that parents who are affecting the kid, why not another legal guardian or a counsellor or even close friends?


Guidance? Parenting to help rebuild that self-esteem could help.


So I guess using this logic, terrorism is such an Islamic or Russian thing?


Again, shootings have been happening in other countries for a while now so we're not spreading anything. Suburban punks can be found anywhere and cause chaos anywhere.

They are. But heroin addicts tend to stay in their basements and leave you alone. I think it's because of the whole "I'm addicted to heroin" thing.

Nice post Franklin.

God damn those Romans and that genocide!

No, micfranklin, suburbs are an American thing, too. By your logic, in this thread and others, there will always be a 'good' adult around to save someone. But in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, "Shit happens." And I did say that children in other 'civilized' countries, like Finland, shouldn't have to turn to violence to get their point across, either. But that is the point. These teenagers are children and they are not necessarily as capable of making responsible choices as an adult would be, not with the constant changes and pressures they are going through just getting through puberty. I think the best solution is to reach them before the act and maybe channel some of that agression. That means parents, school counselors, anyone who could. Unless violence is so ingrained in our actions that there is no stopping it, as Totino suggests with his many instances of murder and mayhem throughout history.

It's not that you're wrong, because you're not, but it's just another complicated issue.

I never said they weren't an American thing.


Well actually when you think about it, there is a "good" adult, or person in general, around but they can't get to the scene of the crime in time though. And BTW Rumsfeld is not one I would consider reliable.


Agreed.

2112: Every creature has those certain predetermined instincts.... Throw the "civilized" people into the wild and they'll turn into animals.

Totino how bout mushroom pickin with me in Finland? i heard there are some delicious kinds of mushrooms in there,,, at least you will leave my love alone till the trip is ovah,,,

I don't like eating fungus. I'll pass.

Don't knock it 'till you try it.

I tried it. It's nasty. End of story :).

Well, the taste is nasty sure. But hanging out with smurfs for the next 5 hours is awesome.

Yeah, I know. So does that mean there's always going to be a tiny fraction of the population who will shoot up their schools, in every country? For some reason I think that even having YouTube as an option promotes the violence. It's not just shooting in schools, it's fights, some kids beating up one kid and other types of violence, too.

My thoughts are just that kids are too impressionable, and the angry ones now know that there's YouTube, and something about that gives them the strength to go through with something they wouldn't if there wasn't a place to broadcast it.

I wouldn't doubt youtube could possibly contribute to it. But again, school shootings were taking place well before youtube was here.

And yes, there is always going to be a fraction of the population who will kill, rob, steal, etc. It's a fact of life.