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.

“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

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.”

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.

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

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Gunman used YouTube to predict school massacre

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