At least seven dead in Finland school shooting

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

At least seven dead in Finland school shooting

By Sami Torma
12 minutes ago

TUUSULA, Finland (Reuters) - At least seven
people died when a gunman opened fire at a
school in southern Finland on Wednesday, hours
after a video was posted on YouTube predicting
a school massacre.

A teacher at Jokela High School told Reuters the
gunman was one of its pupils.

"At this moment its seven (deaths) or more,
higher," Dr Eero Hirvensalo, the head of the
medical response team, told Reuters.

The YouTube video, set to hard-driving music,
shows a still photo of a school that appears to
be Jokela High School. The photo then fragments
to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing
a gun at the camera.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071107/wl_nm/finland_shooting_dc

[shenmue]

1. Awful

:cry:

[rodeodance]

2. my gawd.

[Fierce]

3. Oh, how awful.

In Finland!

[SyntaxError]

4. The American culture of death is spreading there now...

Arggh, what have we done? :(

[davepc]

9. Since when does the US have the market corned on death and violence?

[SyntaxError]

10. School shootings are a US product...

They do occasionally happen in other countries, but not like it does here in the US. Most countries in Europe had maybe one or two of these shootings over the past decade, but here in the US we've had what seems like hundreds.

[Xithras]

14. Not true. The actual numbers are 51 school shootings since '96, about 1/5 non-U.S.

Here are a list of the actual shootings. Todays isn't in there, but I adjusted my numbers to account for it: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html

Those numbers include accidental shootings, gang shootings, and a disturbing number of cases where adults walked onto school campuses and opened fire.

[SyntaxError]

17. So 4/5 of them happened in the US?

Doesn't that tell you something?

[ananda]

5. American violence ..

.. it's contagious.

[Gregorian]

20. That was my thought as well.

How terrible. We must reverse that trend. More kindness and understanding.

Life is tough enough without this nightmare.

[Pavulon]

21. European Wars Defined megadeath

the numbers generated in WW1 and WW2 by Europe are staggering. Far beyond all subsequent wars combines.

We do not corner the market on killing and death.

[Gregorian]

22. That's a good point.

It's easy to be shortsighted. And after all, this melting pot is a compilation of Europeans, among others.

Thanks. There is nothing unique about Americans. It's the human being we're talking about.

[cigsandcoffee]

31. Rubbish

The Europeans have no problems raising violent kooks of their own.

[tom_paine]

6. Who says American Exports are nonexistent these days?

:sarcasm:

[NorthernSpy]

7. why do people think this is "American"?

Many mass murders fitting this pattern have taken place in other countries. We didn't invent this stuff.

[Mike Daniels]

13. It's just par for the course with some people on DU

Whenever anything bad happens, somehow, in someway, America is at fault.

[cigsandcoffee]

32. God, I hate this.

You're exactly right, and it's so sickening to see. "America" is such a convenient Boogieman.

In truth, America is whatever the hell you want it to be. That's what makes it such a great place.

[slackmaster]

15. Laziness, mostly

It's much easier to blame everything on one big target than to talk about the real roots of a problem like violence.

[ben_meyers]

8. After a You-Tube post!

Sometimes I think the internet needs to be turned off.

[krispos42]

11. They are reporting 8 now, shooter still alive

Looks like the shooter tried to off himself with the gun but the wound wasn't fatal. Says he used a .22 pistol.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071107/ap_on_re_eu/finland_school_shooting;_ylt=Ao8_zvEZgffYIQcTq0j7.Btn.3QA

This is very tragic. :-(

I don't understand this. Stuff like this could have happened any time in the past hundred and twenty years or more. But the past decade this all of a sudden is in vogue. Is it the instant fame of live-anywhere-in-the-world modern communications?

I understand it happening here, in the US. The family is under attack by neocon policies. All of the parents in most families work full-time or more,which means nobody's watching the kids. Financial strain is breaking up marriages. Lack of job security means moving all over the state or country chasing jobs, which destroys stability. Our schools are turning into secure lockdown facilities and individualism is being crushed. Poverty is on the rise.

But Finland? A socialistic democracy, where most of those things are suppose to be taken care of???

[BestCenter]

12. I'm sorry, but

That is perhaps the most naive, biased post I've ever read. Are you saying that the U.S. is the only place in the first world where kids grow up alienated and become psychologically ill? And that you're saying that social democratic nations are inherently more stable and less violent than the U.S.? Well, then I suppose Japan doesn't have a high stress-related suicide rate after all. And I suppose a few years ago there wasn't a panic in socialist Norway when a bunch of black metal-listening crazies torched a bunch of historical churches. Oh, and I guess that a few weeks ago the Swiss didn't vote in far-right-wing xenophobes because they're a socialist nation, and these things are "suppose to be taken care of".

[krispos42]

16. Yup, you're sorry

No doubt at all about that.

What the hell does Japan's ADULT SUICIDE RATE have to do with kids shooting up schools? Want to blame the high price of copper on the commodities market as well?

The western Europoean socialist democracies have universal single-payer health care, protective trade policies, and unions. I don't know (and didn't state otherwise) about how stable they are.

I do know they are as a whole less violent than the US...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_percap-crime-assaults-per-capita

...I know they have more union members per capita...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lab_tra_uni_mem-labor-trade-union-membership

...that their income distribution is fairer...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_inc_dis_poo_20-economy-income-distribution-poorest-20
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_inc_dis_poo_10-economy-income-distribution-poorest-10
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_inc_dis_ric_10-economy-income-distribution-richest-10
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_inc_dis_ric_20-economy-income-distribution-richest-20

...and they have a lower divorce rate...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_div_rat-people-divorce-rate

And the vandalous Norwegian teens and the xenophobic Swiss politicians aren't related to school shootings or the general dissatisfaction levels of the the youth population.

You're welcome to start making sense at anytime.

[BestCenter]

23. I don't disagree with such facts

What I DO disagree with is your general sentiment of such disbelief (what, did your monocle pop out?) that such a thing could happen in a country that is more politically to the left of the U.S. You make it seem that Finland is above having such tragedies simply because they have a better system put together. And the other issues I brought up are only the tip of the iceberg as far as examples of how other nations more to the left of the U.S. are not necessarily doing so hot.

[krispos42]

24. It still doesn't explain...

... why this phenomenom is so recent, the past two decades or so.

After World War Two, dozens of nations in Europe were AWASH in lost military weapons from both the Axis and the Allies. And this shit didn't happen.

Until 1934, you could buy a fully-automatic firearm THROUGH MAIL ORDER in this country. And this didn't happen. Not even in the depths of the Great Depression.

When this happens in this country, much ado is made about how the kids were alienated, parents were too busy working, easy access to guns, medical help was inadequate or unvailable, the teachers were too overworked to notice, etc. Much of which is absent in Finland, a comparatively small European country. So, yeah, I'm surprised.

[happyslug]

25. Yes, before WWII, Students were blown apart by bombs instead

See the bath Michigan School bombing of 1927, where 45 people died and 68 suffered injuries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

[krispos42]

26. Yes, I read about that a couple of months ago

It came up in a discussion about this topic, IIRC.

Note that the bomber was not a student.

[happyslug]

27. and unsuccessful attempts were covered up.

For Example in my high school in the 1970s, someone blown up a locker. We heard about it through the grapevine, but nothing on the TV and Newspapers. That was common till the 1990s, massive cover-ups of problems the School did NOT want to address (Such as Riots in the 1960s etc). The issue is NOT more violence, some evidence indicates less, but more is reported today then what happened decades ago. If you are old enough Bomb Scares were bad in the early 1970s till Schools adopted a policy of NOT evacuating their Students (Students were calling in Bomb Scares to get out of School). Most such reports were NOT given to the parents let alone the media.

[Paladin]

29. Finland's Last School Shooting Was In 1989

Here in the U.S., school shootings with multiple victims have been happening on a regular basis for years. And yes, other countries have alienated and psychologically troubled kids, and other nations have stressed-out citizens, and other nations have peeople who are violence-prone and destructive. What these other nations do not have is a huge supply of easily-obtainable firearms, as well as a segment of the population that has elevated guns to the status of religious objects. Try as you might, you cannot separate the school shooting problem in this country from all the guns in the hands of people who shouldn't have them.

[pipoman]

33. Finland's Population = 5 million US = 300 million N/T

[Paladin]

34. Completely Unpersuasive

Go ahead and stack the populations of other modern industrialized nations together until you get 300 million people, and see what the result is regarding school shootings.....

[Eugene]

18. Nine die in Finland after YouTube post (Reuters)

Source: Reuters

Nine die in Finland after YouTube post
Wed Nov 7, 2007 4:11pm EST

By Sami Torma

TUUSULA, Finland (Reuters) - Seven children and
a head teacher were killed when a pupil opened fire
at a school in southern Finland on Wednesday, hours
after he posted a video on YouTube foreshadowing a
massacre there.

The 18-year-old, who walked through the corridors
of Jokela High School firing into classroom after
classroom with a .22-caliber handgun, died later in
hospital after shooting himself in the head, his
doctor said.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSHEL00597220071107

[jmatthan]

19. A national tragedy

We are all in a state of shock in Finland at this event. It is difficult to assign any cause for such an incident.

Finland used to have the highest suicide rate in the world till quite recently (now overtaken by some a couple of East European countries). The suicides were related the alcohol problem, the Government decision to make more schizophrenic patients as Open Care patients, Arctic Syndrome, and a few other major social issues quite Finnish in origin.

But suicides usually related to taking of ones own life.

This sort of killing others has become more prevalent only in the last few years - the nail bomber incident in a shopping center near Helsinki, etc.

Using the public media like YouTube to explain one's plans is bizarre, and YouTube took down the video almost immediately after the event as it violated their policy.

The nation is in mourning and hopefully the parents of the victims will get the counseling they require. Immediate counseling has been given to all children and staff in the school.

One has to fear copy-cat situations, and one hopes the Finnish media will correctly assess this and offer some solutions rather than fire in all directions blaming video games, movies, gang cultures, US influence, etc.

The majority of Finnish children are well behaved, courteous and their behavior needs to be lauded.

Annikki and I will cover this subject in depth during the next week on my blog:

http://jmatthan.blogspot.com

We are grandparents of Finnish children and it concerns us deeply.

[leftist_not_liberal]

28. American exports on the rise.

.

[-..__...]

30. Yeah, I agree.

They need to block, filter or ban access to YouTube over there.