Guns

I’m far away from the tragedy of Norway, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. It was a horrible massacre and a terrorist attack which should never have happened. But it did.

We know something about shootings in Finland too: the school shootings in Jokela 2007 and in Kauhajoki 2008. Every Finn will certainly remember the horrific moments of these tragedies. Innocent students and teachers murdered – for what?

We all agreed that something has to be done. But what? That’s where no one agrees.

The former Finnish prime minister Matti  Vanhanen demands changes in gun laws in Finland: a claim that has been made by others before. To make it more difficult to get a license for a gun, and forbid certain automatic guns all together.

But does that really change anything? For me it sounds like an easy way out. Something needs to be done, so let’s change the law, that’s what politicians know how to do. But is the problem really the guns that exist?

Guns cannot shoot by themselves. Guns cannot load themselves. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. If we don’t fix the actual problem, changing the gun laws will not change anything; except make the life of hunters and sports shooters more difficult. And we have a lot of them in Finland: people who are law-obedient citizens, but happen to work, compete or otherwise hobby guns. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Breivik did not shoot all those people just because he happened to have access to a gun. If a person is set on doing something that terrible, he or she will do it one way or the other. A gun is only means to a goal. If you don’t have a gun, you think of something else.

Besides, gun laws only affect legal guns. Nowadays pretty much anyone can get a hold of an illegal gun even in Finland.

My question is what went wrong in our society so that a person can get so angry at the world he wants to massacre innocent people, teenagers, students, teachers?

And what can be done?

"No law ever prevented a crime"

- Author unknown