bigsale
November 8th, 2007, 09:15 PM
Finnish 'youtube killer' was social outcast
http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/11/08/0911_finland_wideweb__470x455,0.jpg
Pekka-Eric Auvinen posted images of himself on YouTube before going on a rampage at his school, killing at least eight people.
Photo: AFP
TOgfc_Qb594
FINLAND'S accommodating gun laws are likely to attract criticism after an 18-year-old gunman shot dead six students, the school's principal and its nurse before turning the gun on himself.
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 US and Yemen.
The murderer, named by police as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, was pronounced dead after being treated for a single gunshot wound to the head at Helsinki University Hospital. The students were killed when the 18-year-old student went on a rampage at his school in southern Finland after announcing the bloodbath with a posting on the internet site YouTube.
The video, posted some time in the past two weeks, zooms in on the school with heavy metal music blaring in the background and shows a young man against a red background pointing a gun at the camera.
In his profile on the YouTube website, Auvinen, calling himself Sturmgeist89, says: "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." The site was taken down within hours of the shooting.
He killed eight people after moving from classroom to classroom and spraying them with gunfire at his secondary school in Tuusula, north of Helsinki.
"He was moving systematically through the school corridors, knocking on doors and shooting through doors," a teacher, Kim Kiuru, told a local radio station.
"It felt unreal. A pupil I have taught was running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand."
Five boys and two girls were killed in the rampage.
The death toll was expected to rise, since many others were badly wounded. The Finnish Government ordered a day of national mourning yesterday.
Children climbed out of school windows and clambered over walls when the youth came prowling through the corridors, shooting wildly from what police said was a .22 calibre pistol.
Police said the killer's gun was legally owned but he had obtained a licence only three weeks ago. Although murder rates are higher in neighbouring Russia and the former Soviet Baltic states, Finland has the highest murder rate in western Europe at around 28 per 100,000 people.
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. "Definitely this will impact opinions about handguns," he said.
One of Auvinen's classmates told the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper that the gunman, who was a sports shooter, had recently been acting strangely and had begun making drawings of gun massacres.
According to media reports, he had repeatedly expressed admiration for Hitler and Stalin and he names Nietzsche as a favourite author on his YouTube account.
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/finnish-school-shooting-fuels-gun-debate/2007/11/08/1194329410337.html
http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2007/11/08/0911_finland_wideweb__470x455,0.jpg
Pekka-Eric Auvinen posted images of himself on YouTube before going on a rampage at his school, killing at least eight people.
Photo: AFP
TOgfc_Qb594
FINLAND'S accommodating gun laws are likely to attract criticism after an 18-year-old gunman shot dead six students, the school's principal and its nurse before turning the gun on himself.
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 US and Yemen.
The murderer, named by police as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, was pronounced dead after being treated for a single gunshot wound to the head at Helsinki University Hospital. The students were killed when the 18-year-old student went on a rampage at his school in southern Finland after announcing the bloodbath with a posting on the internet site YouTube.
The video, posted some time in the past two weeks, zooms in on the school with heavy metal music blaring in the background and shows a young man against a red background pointing a gun at the camera.
In his profile on the YouTube website, Auvinen, calling himself Sturmgeist89, says: "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." The site was taken down within hours of the shooting.
He killed eight people after moving from classroom to classroom and spraying them with gunfire at his secondary school in Tuusula, north of Helsinki.
"He was moving systematically through the school corridors, knocking on doors and shooting through doors," a teacher, Kim Kiuru, told a local radio station.
"It felt unreal. A pupil I have taught was running towards me, screaming, a pistol in his hand."
Five boys and two girls were killed in the rampage.
The death toll was expected to rise, since many others were badly wounded. The Finnish Government ordered a day of national mourning yesterday.
Children climbed out of school windows and clambered over walls when the youth came prowling through the corridors, shooting wildly from what police said was a .22 calibre pistol.
Police said the killer's gun was legally owned but he had obtained a licence only three weeks ago. Although murder rates are higher in neighbouring Russia and the former Soviet Baltic states, Finland has the highest murder rate in western Europe at around 28 per 100,000 people.
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. "Definitely this will impact opinions about handguns," he said.
One of Auvinen's classmates told the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper that the gunman, who was a sports shooter, had recently been acting strangely and had begun making drawings of gun massacres.
According to media reports, he had repeatedly expressed admiration for Hitler and Stalin and he names Nietzsche as a favourite author on his YouTube account.
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/finnish-school-shooting-fuels-gun-debate/2007/11/08/1194329410337.html