8 Dead in Finland School Shooting

The Guardian ^ | November 7, 2007 | Anon

[BlackVeil]

TUUSULA, Finland (AP) - An 18-year-old student opened fire in a Finnish high school Wednesday, killing seven students and the principal before turning the gun on himself, police said. The teenager, who was not identified, shot himself in the head but survived and was taken to a hospital in ``extremely critical condition,'' police spokesman Tero Haapala said. The attack at Jokela High School in Tuusula, some 30 miles north of the capital, Helsinki, shocked the Nordic nation, where gun ownership is fairly common by European standards but deadly shootings are rare. ... Police said at a news conference after the attack that the gunman in Wednesday's attack shot the victims - five boys, two girls and the female principal - with a .22-caliber pistol. About a dozen other people were injured as they tried to escape the school, police said. ``He was from an ordinary family,'' police chief Matti Tohkanen said about the gunman, who belonged to a gun club and got a license for the pistol Oct. 19. He did not have a previous criminal record, he said. ... Henri Vayrynen, 13, and his classmates had witnessed the shooting of the principal outside the school through the classroom window. She said the gunman then came into Henri Vayrynen's class shouting: ``Revolution! Smash everything!'' When no one did anything, he shot the TV and the windows of the class room but did not fire at the students. The he ran out and down the corridor, ... Kiuru said he saw a woman's body as he fled the building. ``Then my pupils shouted at me out of the windows to ask what they should do and I told them to jump out of the windows ... and all my pupils were saved,'' Kiuru said.

[Slapshot68]

“The teenager, who was not identified, shot himself in the head but survived “

He couldn’t even kill himself right. What a tragedy.

[M203M4]

the gunman then came into Henri Vayrynen's class shouting: ``Revolution! Smash everything!''

Communism? Anarchism?

[CarrotAndStick]

They had videos of him shooting apples, on YouTube, that were pulled off a short while ago. His agenda was to kill all people except for the top 3 percent of the “most intelligent people” who, he felt, were the only ones who deserved to live.

[A_Former_Democrat]

Islamofascism?

[DBrow]

“where gun ownership is fairly common by European standards “

How does Finland get along with the UN?

[BlackVeil]

Anarchism maybe. There are some pictures around either of him or from his collection, and they look heavy metal. Also, he had a German word in is webname.

[Berlin_Freeper]

That sounds real intelligent. /s

[BlackVeil]

His agenda was to kill all people except for the top 3 percent of the “most intelligent people” ...

Good thing he shot himself, then.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The attack at Jokela High School in Tuusula, some 30 miles north of the capital, Helsinki, shocked the Nordic nation, where gun ownership is fairly common by European standards but deadly shootings are rare.

This must've slipped into the article by mistake.

[DBrow]

“Communism? Anarchism?”

His YouTube profile (Margaret Sangerism):

Name: Pekka-Eric Auvinen
Age: 18

Male from Finland.

I am a cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist, antisocial socialdarwinist, realistic idealist and godlike atheist.

SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM! JUSTITIA SUUM CUIQUE DISTRIBUIT! SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!

I am prepared to fight and die for my cause. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.

You might ask yourselves, why did I do this and what do I want. Well, most of you are too arrogant and closed-minded to understand... You will proprably say me that I am”insane”, “crazy”, “psychopath”, “criminal” or crap like that. No, the truth is that I am just an animl, a human, an individual, a dissident.

I have had enough. I don’t want to be part of this fucked up society. Like some other wise people have said in the past, human race is not worth fighting for or saving... only worth killing. But... When my enemies will run and hide in fear when mentioning my name... When the gangsters of the corrupted governments have been shot in the streets... When the rule of idioracy and the democratic system has been replaced with justice... When intelligent people are finally free and rule the society instead of the idiocratic rule of majority... In that great day of deliverance, you will know what I want.

Long live the revolution... revolution against the system, which enslaves not only the majority of weak-minded masses but also the small minority of strong-minded and intelligent individuals! If we want to live in a different world, we must act. We must rise against the enslaving, corrupted and totalitarian regimes and overthrow the tyrants, gangsters and the rule of idiocracy. I can’t alone change much but hopefully my actions will inspire all the intelligent people of the world and start some sort of revolution against the current systems. The system discriminating naturality and justice, is my enemy. The people living in the world of delusion and supporting this system are my enemies.

I am ready to die for a cause I know is right, just and true... even if I would lose or the battle would be only remembered as evil... I will rather fight and die than live a long and unhappy life.

And remember that this is my war, my ideas and my plans. Don’t blame anyone else for my actions than myself. Don’t blame my parents or my friends. I told nobody about my plans and I always kept them inside my mind only. Don’t blame the movies I see, the music I hear, the games I play or the books I read. No, they had nothing to do with this. This is my war: one man war against humanity, governments and weak-minded masses of the world! No mercy for the scum of the earth! HUMANITY IS OVERRATED! It’s time to put NATURAL SELECTION & SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST back on tracks!

Justice renders to everyone his due.
Country: Finland
Occupation: Unemployed Philosopher, Outcast
Companies: Human Race (evolved one step above though)
Interests and Hobbies: Existentialism, Freedom, Truth, Misantrophy, Social / Personality Psychology, Evolution Science, Political Incorrectness, Women, BDSM, Guns (I love you Catherine), Shooting, Computer Games, Sarcasm, Irony, Mass / Serial Killers, Macabre Art, Black Comedy, Absurdism
Movies and Shows: The Matrix, A View To A Kill, Falling Down, Natural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs, Last Man Standing, Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Butcher MD (aka Zombie Holocaust), Saw 1-3, Lord Of War, The Deer Hunter, True Romance, The Untouchables, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Idiocracy, They Live, Apocalypse Now, End Of Days, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Dr. Strangelove, House MD (TV), Monty Python, TV Documentaries Relating To History
Music: KMFDM, Rammstein, Eisbrecher, Nine Inch Nails, Grendel, Impaled Nazarene, Macabre, Deathstars, The Prodigy, Combichrist, Godsmack, Slayer, Children Of Bodom, Alice Cooper, Sturmgeist, Suicide Commando, Hatebreed, Suffocation, Terrorizer
Books: Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury), 1984 (Orwell), Brave New World (Huxley), The Republic (Plato), all works of Nietzsche

[DBrow]

Nope. ROP not involved in this one.

[VeniVidiVici]

Unlike England, Canada, et al., I doubt we’ll see the Finns go screaming for gun banning/control after a tragedy. There’s this little country next door that’s called ‘Russia’ that the Finns tangle with from time to time.

They *like* their guns.

[wideminded]

Myyrmanni bombing

Finland's population is only 5 million.

[woollyone]

Then my pupils shouted at me out of the windows to ask what they should do and I told them to jump out of the windows ... and all my pupils were saved,’’ Kiuru said.

No lockdown into the gun free zone huh?

whodathunk!

[BlackVeil]

all works of Nietzsche

When I was reading that, I thought he sounded very Nietzchian.

Thanks for posting, very informative.

[weegee]

He’s dead now.

[The KG9 Kid]

The shooter also posted several videos on YouTube about anti-depressant medicines that he was taking and showed a tabletop full of all sorts of pills he was prescribed.

Yes, once again more of these symptom hiding medications playing a part in mass-killing.

[CarrotAndStick]

I doubt weÂ’ll see the Finns go screaming for gun banning/control after a tragedy.

But Reuters has already gone ahead with this:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL0728155820071107

School shooting puts harsh focus on Finland gun policy

Wed Nov 7, 2007 4:37pm EST

By Agnieszka Flak

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland’s accommodating gun laws are likely to attract criticism after an 18-year-old gunman shot dead seven children and a school principal on Wednesday. The shooter turned the gun on himself and later died in hospital.

About 56 of every 100 Finns own a gun, according to a study by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies this year, putting the rate of firearm ownership in Finland third after the United States and Yemen.

The government has said Finland’s low crime rate meant there was little need for harsher gun regulations.

But Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said that perception might change after the student, who obtained a license for a .22 caliber handgun from a shooting club last month, opened fire on his fellow students in the south of Finland.

“Definitely this will impact opinions about handguns,” Vanhanen told a news conference after the shooting in the municipality of Tuusula.

He said the government would take up the issue later.

The European Union’s arms legislation forbids the sale of weapons to those under 18 except for hunting or target shooting.

Earlier this year, the EU proposed raising the legal age for all gun possession to 18, a measure that drew protests from Finland which said hunting was a popular leisure activity.

The proposal allows minors to use guns only if accompanied by a parent or guardian.

In 2006, there were 300,000 hunters among the 5.3 million inhabitants of Finland, the national statistics office said.

Some 38,000 were under the age of 20.

Anyone aged 15 and over can apply for a gun license with local police if they are able to offer a valid reason. The easiest way to obtain a license is by joining a shooting or hunting club, as the Jokela gunman did in October.

If underage, a Finn needs to have his or her legal guardian’s approval to apply. In addition all applicants are checked for a clean criminal record and whether they have any disability that could impact their gun use.

Violent incidents are rare at Finnish schools and metal detectors, common in the United States, are unheard of.

The massacre at Jokela High School could change all that, said Timo Myllyntaus, a history professor at Turku University.

“This is very brutal violence with no obvious reason and seemed to have been very carefully planned and might change the school and university life in this country,” he said.

“Finnish schools and universities are very peaceful compared to American ones.”

[CarrotAndStick]

Times Online

 

November 7, 2007
 

 

Gunman used YouTube to predict school massacre

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2825403.ece

 

 

Jack Malvern

 

A teenage gunman killed his headmistress and seven fellow pupils at a school in southern Finland today, hours after posting a chilling video on the YouTube website predicting the massacre.

Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, a pupil at Jokela high school in Tuusula, went on a rampage through classrooms before turning the gun on himself. He shot himself in the head but survived and was in an “extremely critical condition” in hospital last night, a police spokesman said.

The school shooting is thought to be unprecedented in Finland, where violent incidents are rare despite a high rate of gun ownership. In his YouTube postings and videos, Auvinen appeared to have similarities to the authors of some of the United States' worst massacres - including the shootings at Virginia Tech in April.

The video - which has been deleted - shows a still image of a school that appears to be the Jokela school. The photograph fragments to reveal a red-tinted picture of a man pointing a gun at the camera.

Related Links

• Prediction of killings posted hours before attack

• 'MySpace killers' can find instant notoriety

Multimedia

 

 

On his YouTube profile, posted under the name Sturmgeist89, Auvinen wrote: "I am prepared to fight and die for my cause. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection."

Jan-Olav Nyholm, a local police officer, said that the killer came from a "very normal family" of four. "He has one brother," he said. "He had no problems in school."

Kim Kiuru, a teacher at the school, described how he first became aware of the situation at noon (10am GMT) when the headmaster announced over the public address system that all students should remain in their classrooms.

"I stayed in the corridor to listen to more instructions, having locked my classroom door. After that I saw the gunman running with what appeared to be a small-calibre handgun in his hand through the doors towards me, after which I escaped to the corridor downstairs and ran in the opposite direction.

"He was moving systematically through the school hallways, knocking on the doors and shooting through the doors. It felt unreal, a pupil I have taught myself was running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand."

Mr Kiuru escaped and shouted at his pupils, who were still in the classroom, to jump out of the windows to safety. "All of my pupils were saved," he said.

Police later said that eight people had died, seven of them students and the eighth the school principal, who has not been named.

Auvinen's name was appended to a "manifesto" posted on the internet that claims that "humanity is overrated" and that "it's time to put natural selection and survival of the fittest back on tracks".

The document, which is part of a collection of files including photographs of a young man posing with a pistol, purports to be signed by Auvinen, who lists his aliases as "NaturalSelector89, Natural Seclector, Sturmgeist89 and Sturmgeist".

Sturmgeist89, taken from the German for "Storm Spirit", is the name used by the author of the internet video. Sturmgeist's profile on YouTube, which is largely a rant about the state of humanity, concludes: "I am the law, judge and executioner. There is no higher authority than me."

Miro Lukinmaa, a student at the school, told the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti that the gunman had fired at pupils and at police. "Suddenly people began running and shots were heard and began raining down," he said. "I saw injured people lying in the corridor. We started to run and followed [the crowd] in a panic. Everyone was trying to squeeze through a narrow door."

Another student, Tuomas Hulkkonen, told Helsingin Sanomat that he had known the gunman for ten years. He said that the man had been acting oddly in recent days and had drawn pictures of guns.

Police officers, some armed with automatic weapons, surrounded the school and a city official announced shortly before 4pm (2pm GMT) that the siege was over. The last shot was fired at 12.04pm (10.04am GMT). The gunman fired a single shot at police, who did not return fire, local agencies reported.

Hundreds of pupils and staff were evacuated from the Jokela complex, which houses both an upper secondary school and a comprehensive school.

The operation involved about a hundred police and rescuers, some with automatic weapons and body armour.

Police told reporters that the suspect was a member of a gun club, had a licence for a handgun and had neither a criminal record nor a history of threatening behaviour.

Despite having the third-largest per capita ratio of handgun ownership in the world, violent incidents are rare at Finnish schools. According to Finnish media, there have been four stabbings at schools since 1999. None of these caused fatalities.

The last major attack in the country came in 2002 when a young man killed himself and six others in a bomb blast at a shopping mall in Helsinki.

 

 

 

 

 

• Have your say

 

 

People make funny videos on YouTube, it seems to encourage a jovial approach to life. There are all types of videos on 'Tube, reflecting all apsects of life. Life encourages a sick approach to life, or he was just a nutter, the old Nature v Nurture debate, I think both. He would have got infamy without the use of 'Tube; he could have sent the video to the media, as did Seung-Hui Cho, put it on another website, or made a website just for his video. There were many school attacks before February 2005, when YouTube was set up.

 

Pekka The Pecker, Birmingham, West Midlands

 

Was it not possible for anyone who might have seen the video to have reported it? It seems that the school concerned could have been identified, and that would have been enough to have started an investigation.

 

Chris Clark, London, United Kingdom

 

I think this hammers the nail in " Civillians and Guns dont mix"
Old soldier

 

Charles Wheeldon, Wellington, New zealand

 

Horrible news, my heart goes out to the victims and to their families.

 

MA, Denver, Colorado, USA

 

everyone appears to want their 15 minutes of fame on YouTube. It seems to encourage a sick approach to life.

 

CA, Manchester, UK

 

It's a pity that seven innocent students dead beacuse of the gun .the adult must take care of their own child not only their but also their spirit.in order to avoid the caused fatalities.

 

Michaellzheng, Zhe jiang, China

 

8 now confirmed dead, including the Headmistress. 5 boys, two girls, and the Principal.
Parliament was suspended on hearing the news.

 

Michael Collinson, Helsinki, Finland

 

 

 

• Read all 7 comments

• Have your say

[M203M4]

I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.

Smart move shooting himself in the head.

[Red6]

It’s the guns fault. No guns equal no crime, right?

He used a 22cal “assault pistol” obviously. Did the gun have a bayonete lug, that’s the real question.

Why does this only happen in America?

More gun laws will fix the problem.

[OSHA]

We must rise against the enslaving, corrupted and totalitarian regimes and overthrow the tyrants, gangsters and the rule of idiocracy

Where do 7 high school students fit into this list?

[dead]

No country has a monopoly on douchebag kooks. They pop up all over.

We need a global campaign to encourage kooks to kill themselves, by themselves. Tie it into global warming somehow. Nuts generally buy into that crap wholeheartedly.

[JimSEA]

Nietzsche

[RobRoy]

>>They had videos of him shooting apples, on YouTube, that were pulled off a short while ago.<<

So, like with the britney video, I have to go to limewire...

[Myrddin]

The brave little tyrant took advantage of shooting unarmed people in a school. He's really a coward and a bully. Too bad the .22 in the head didn't do the job. Infect him with cholera and leave him locked in a cell to enjoy a miserable end.

[weegee]

There is an industry ready to feed his ego and god complex. He’s “smarter” than all of those around him.

[Myrddin]

Why does this only happen in America?

Did you flunk geography? This happened in Finland.

[dead]

Too bad the .22 in the head didn't do the job.

It did, the bullet just took a while to find the brain in his head.

He's pining for the fjords.

[stripes1776]

Communism? Anarchism?

Maybe he watched too much Wagner.

[The KG9 Kid]

He was being ironic.

[Kandy Atz]

I worked for a Finnish company and took 4 trips to Finland during my employment. They are the most nonconfrontational folks I have ever worked with. Nobody wanted to lead just a bunch of fence sitters until there was consensus.

I rightly assumed their precarious position between the west and Russia, WW2 experience and their history of fighting for their independence from Sweden and Russia was part of the reason for their behavior. This was confirmed by a few of my Finnish coworkers who thought it funny I even noticed.

All were wonderful people to work with just challenging for an American who is used to just doing whatever it takes to get the job done.

Finland is an absolutely gorgeous country.

[tompster76]

yes..Hunting is really huge in finland, pretty much third of population have been hunting at some point. kind of tradition. Another relevant thing is the Weapons Cache case after WWII (a lot of guns were hidden around the country in preparation for a possible russian invasion. This may have been one reason why Stalin did not attack again in 1945-48).

Weapons_cache_case
Following the Moscow Armistice, two officers in Finnish Military HQ, Colonel Valo Nihtilä and Lieutenant Colonel Usko Haahti, started planning countermeasures against a possible Soviet occupation of the country. They came up with the idea of decentralized storing of light infantry weapons, so that in case of occupation, an immediate guerilla war could be launched.

[DBrow]

“Yes, once again more of these symptom hiding medications playing a part in mass-killing.”

Yeah, I saw the videos. Like a scene from Quadrophenia.

I’m sort of split on that issue. if we took a bunch of “normal” people and gave them Prozac and some turned into psycho killers, maybe I’d see a cause/effect. But as it is, there must be something wrong or off or needing repair to get on the meds, and that sample of people by definition is not “normal”. it’s like assuming blood pressure medicine causes stroke because so many people on those meds have strokes, compared to people who don’t take them.

[DBrow]

“Where do 7 high school students fit into this list?”

I assume a rhetorical question.

I think he was clinically ill and used that as a justification for his insanity.

[Diplomat]

At least with his posting to YouTube and MySpace, we are able to get some sort of picture as to why he did this.

It sure would be nice to have a Cho’s manifesto. Bet he has similar motives as this. Though I always suspected that the real reason NBC won’t release the documents is because of the level of anti-Christian hatred expressed by Cho therein. Plus, the likelyhood that his writings reflect a lot of the popular culture, what the MSM is constantly harping on, and the anti-American teachings that are pervasive throughout what we call “higher learning” these days.

The above is just the opinion of this author, nothing more.

[Sherman Logan]

His agenda was to kill all people except for the top 3 percent of the “most intelligent people” who, he felt, were the only ones who deserved to live.

No wonder he shot himself. Too bad he didn't get mixed up and do that part first.

[Red6]

Did you flunk in common sense? It’s called sarcasm.

There have been many school shootings in other countries. In fact the school shooting with the most dead until Virginia Tech was Erfurt, Germany. The criminal/terrorist incident that claimed the most lives at a school was at Beslan Russia, with 386 dead. That’s more than 10 times what was killed at Virginia Tech. Yet in the US you have TV talk show hosts on MSNBC asking rhetorical questions like, “Why is it only in the US that we have such shootings happen?” You have Germans watching Bowling for Columbine and thinking that this is an “American unique problem” (Another thing the US media touted erroneously).

[VeniVidiVici]

I am ready to die for a cause I know is right, just and true... even if I would lose or the battle would be only remembered as evil... I will rather fight and die than live a long and unhappy life.

And yet the wussy went after unarmed and unprepared kids at school. And then to shoot himself in the head! These wackos are all chickens.

Oh. And his diatribe sounds like it is stratight of the the DUmmie pages.

[AliVeritas]

Yep. Let this be a lesson to all those who follow occult rooted, Darwinist, Nazi paths to see themselves as god.

He died. May God have mercy on his soul.

There are so many that post much worse than this and spread the same ideas...

I can’t imagine the parents state right now.

[archy]

after WWII (a lot of guns were hidden around the country in preparation for a possible russian invasion. This may have been one reason why Stalin did not attack again in 1945-48).

After the successful Soviet spankings of client states East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956, the Soviets warplanned a possible repeat invasion and occupation of Finland, this time not making the blunders they did during the 1939-40 Winter War. The Finnish intelligence services picked up on the Soviet preparations, and dutifully considered what the country could do to discourage such a move without completely wrecking the national economy or making the country dependent of foreign military supply sources.

Enter the American firm of Interarms, then known as Interarmco, which was then selling obsolete military surplus weaponry to American target shooters, humters and collectors,l as well as covertly equipping Cuban exiles preparing to visit their homeland and take it back. The Finns assembled and traded off their obsolete rifles, some dating back to the previous century and others for which ammunition was unavailable or limited. In return, Finland received 500,000 WWII British Sten 9mm submachineguns and magazines, and their national ammunition factories began churning out 9mm ammo by the hundreds of thousands.

The Soviets recalled the Finnish troopers and reservists who had taken a million-and-a-half man invading force in 1939 and in four months bled it white at a cost of nearly a million casualties. The Soviets call that period the belya smiert, the White Death; at least as many froze top death as were shot by the Finns, including most of the Soviet wounded.

And the Russian leadership decided not to come calling again. The Finns were just a little too dangerous, and they were now well enough armed to cause invaders a real headache, and for an occupation force, a real nightmare. And the 100,000 rounds of antitank ammunition the Finns got from Spain and Israel for their aging German Sturmgeschutze III tank destroyers didn't help matters a bit either.