Revising gunpermits

The most controversial thing that has happened lately here in Finland, has been the sacking of the editor in chief for a newspaper.

The owners of the newspaper deny the editor in question for having been sacked for living in a lesbian relationship and claims instead that the reason instead is her dishonesty, as the editors' partner is involved in local politics and this never came up in their talks previous to hiring her.
And with a journalist being involved in a relationship with a politician, no matter being lesbian, gay or heterosexual, there is always the possibility of being biased towards your spouse. Which is all natural,

Anyway, the Finnish gun laws are now being revised and it seems that Finland is to get the most restrictive laws concerning the possession and licensing of firearms in the whole of EU. All permits granted during the past two years are to be revised and in the future two police officers will have to be present when applicants are interviewed for their permits and also a medical check will be required.

Strangely enough both of the recent school shooting incidents here in Finland, were committed with licensed firearms, and as there always are ways to obtain illegal guns, I really wonder how much impact, if at all, this new gun permit law will have on sad incidents like these as they seem to become more and more common.

Another shooting

My apologies to my dear readers.
So many sad things have been happening here in Finland lately, as well as in my personal life, that I my normal urge to blog has almost completely gone missing. I have missed the routine of blogging but have had lack of ideas, as the main reason for blogging is not to write about my personal life, but to give my own view of the contemporary life in this country instead.

Sad was the latest incident of shootings where over ten young adults were killed, shot with a handgun in their school. This was the second in a year, and for me with offspring in the same age it has been hard to conceive how much it has affected me as well, even though our family has not been involved in the incidents.

A god thing has been the activity these sad happenings have created in other schools for the students to cope giving them ways to work through their feelings of anger, sadness and fear. Sessions have been held to talk through the incidents with the students and time was made available for them who wished to talk about it.

So maybe something good will come out of these two sad incidents, eventually, even though it may not feel like it at this moment.

Wild children

Since the tragic shooting at a high school last Wednesday when at least 76 shots were fired by an18-year-old shooter, Finland’s Prime Minister considers an examination of the legislation whether hand guns should be kept at sports clubs and target ranges instead of being allowed to be taken home.

On Friday several threats or believed threats to schools were made around the country and Police in eastern Finland even detained a 16-year-old boy on suspicion of uploading a threatening video onto the YouTube website.

The debate on the issue on Internet about the shootings in school has been going on since it happened and there are discussions supporting what happened and those who are against it.

Until today I had not had any thoughts about the family of the shooter, how they must suffer. Feeling the guilt of not knowing about what was going on, not seeing it coming, the thoughts about if there was anything they could have done to prevent it from happening. The anguish of not being able to help your own child when obviously having been in distress, the feeling of being an outcast, as there is no one who can really understand what you are going through…

I certainly was a wild child, even though you probably wouldn’t realise it seeing me today.

I know I did cause my parents a lot of trouble and I even did a few things I am sure they were sick with worry and really ashamed of at the time. Today it is my time to be worried about my offspring, fortunately they have not as yet done any headless stunts as I did in my childhood, still I have had worries and not one day is like the one before and I am thankful as it keeps me young.

I remember the fear “not being loved by anyone” and the despair of “not quite fitting in with the others”, the feeling of “not having any future” you sometimes can feel, especially in your teens. So I can understand where violent acts stem from, it doesn’t’ necessarily mean you have to act upon every single one of them. You just have to stick tight and endure, grow up as they say. Still, when you grow up your trouble does not go away; it just changes into something else.

I really wonder if I am getting anywhere with this today…

This certainly calls for some more tea!

Armed adolescents

According to current Finnish law children between15 and 18 years can acquire guns for target shooting or hunting, if granted by their guardian.

A gun permit is required in order to legally be able to purchase a handgun and the arms license is applied for at the local police. The police examine the suitability of the person and the applicants must also have to prove a legal sanction for acquiring the firearm like target shooting as a hobby or hunting. Adolescents in Finland holding a gun permit are today allowed to hunt without adult supervision.

According to the Ministry of the Interior's records there are currently 1,620,000 licensed firearms in Finland, with the country having third most guns per capita in the world. At present there are 56 legal guns for every 100 and about 650,000 firearm license holders with about 60 % of the firearms licensed for hunting purposes. There is currently

“only at the most illegal firearms in tens of thousands in numbers” according to the Ministry of the Interior.

So far Finland has been the only member country in the EU opposing the European Union directive for children under the age of 18 not being allowed to possess any firearms, but now there seems to be a total change of course. The change of opinion seems to stem from the lethal high school shootings that took place in the vicinity of Helsinki couple of days ago.

The government on Friday announced that it is ready to accept the proposed EU directive and that the Parliament is to vote in the matter in the nearest coming weeks in order to sanction the directive.

8 shot dead in high school!

Yesterday was a day of terror and sadness and today has been declared a day of national mourning and flags are all day down to half pole accordingly.

An 18 year male high school student who had just last month received his shooting permit fired his gun in school yesterday killing 6 fellow students, the school nurse and the principal in the outskirts of the capital Helsinki. One more student got injured by gunfire and a dozen more students were injured by shards of glass when trying to flee from the site by windows. Apparently the gunman shot himself in the head and lies now in intensive care with life threatening injuries. This happened just minutes before noon and it was all over before even the police was notified it seems.

What makes it even sadder is that the student had posted a video clip on YouTube the day before announcing the school massacre to take place yesterday in advance and the incident hit the news big and it was on most news channels like the BBC by the evening, which is a sad way to make Finland noticed worldwide.

Nothing this big a massacre has even occurred in the Scandinavian countries before as far as I know, there was a bomb explosion in a shopping mall near Helsinki a couple a years ago with a teenage bomber that got killed in the incident.

The Scandinavian countries have so far been quite untouched, not to say virginal from massive violence. No terrorist bomb attacks to mention, just two Swedish politicians assassinated over the past two decades. This happening now rocks the security we have been living in bad, making all our lives more insecure about what can happen.

Even if our family was not personally affected it still touched closely having teenagers in high school, I can only try to imagine the fear and terror the parents with children in that school went through during the day with the ongoing incident, and feel empathy for the parents who lost their children in such a useless massacre.

Fur coats and salmon

Yesterday about 2500 minks were let loose from a fur farm here in Finland. I do not agree with Homo Sapiens keeping animals just to skin them for their precious fur but using the hide of other animals we eat the meat of I think is acceptable, then you make use of it all instead of keeping these fur farms with caged in foxes, minks or what ever, fair would be to have to go out and hunt the animals you want for your fur coat.

Something for us ladies to think about maybe, first taking shooting lessons and going on hunting trips in order of acquiring our precious and sought after fur coats? At least it would be fairer to the animals as you just might miss your shot. And besides, then it would not just be money talking, you would have to do something yourself in order to get your fur coat also keeping in mind how the actual killing itself would affect each hunter. At least you would have to make an honest decision about being a murderer and not blaming it on somebody else and not taking the responsibility of it.

Letting the minks loose in the nature is bad for the environment with most of the minks never captured and as minks are notorious of killing everything and anything just for the sake of killing, considering the killing a fun pastime and do not do it out of hunger like other carnivores, the minks kill just for kicks the surrounding wildlife suffers for long time afterwards. The same effect some human hunters also just do it for the fun of shooting, not to eat what they have killed out on the loose in the woods. But are there ever as many as 2500 hunters out in the same woods at the same time killing everything they come across?

Luckily the minks were set free now and not in the spring with the birds nesting and other animals having given birth to their little babies in the spring time.

Anyway, getting a discount or having a sale has an extraordinary effect on people and so also here in Finland. Especially old people and retirees apparently have to time to drive from one supermarket to another in order to get the cheapest price available on their groceries, but has anyone of them even though about how much it costs in petrol driving for kms more than you would need, or the effect of the carbon oxide on the environment?

Anyway, today I experience chaos in the shopper’s heaven, in a supermarket. Norwegian salmon was on offer for a real bargain price but the salmon did not arrive in time for opening in the morning and still at midday when we went into this particular supermarket I am there still was no salmon. When we were there it was to arrive in twenty minutes, well we left without buying any as we weren’t there for the fish in the first place, but seeing all these people coming from a distance to get the cheap salmon and to their disappointment finding out there was n one, and the crowds that was built in front of the fishmongers, well you can imagine when people are promised something to eat and they do not get it. Many apparently decided to stay on and wait for the salmon’s arrival as the supermarket got more and more crowded while we still were in there.

Food that was promised and none given resulting in riots, does that sound familiar at all?

Well, that is how the French revolution began in 1789, no bread for the people. I doubt it would spark up a revolution here in Finland as people of today are way too well behaved. People just queue their time and then resign without complaining, even if disappointed when not getting any salmon for the right price. I personally prefer the wild Baltic Sea salmon with its’ paler meat from the cultivated Norwegian salmon that has been fed colorants to achieve it’s orange colour.

Third most guns in the world!

Apparently firearm ownership in Finland is the third highest per capita in the world, according to The Small Arms Survey 2007 done by the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

It is said according to the study that there are 90 guns per 100 people in the US, followed by Yemen with 61 per 100 people and coming third with 56 guns for every 100 residents in this country!
According to the Geneva based researchers, “gun violence often occurs in urban areas rapidly growing with extreme poverty creating lawless areas without effective policing”. I wonder how that applies to Finland, the urban areas with extreme poverty. I had no idea the Finns were this gun prone, but it sounds quite a lot to me. Anyway, I guess it is one person owing more than one gun, and this was not just handguns in the survey I gather, hunting rifles and shotguns must have been counted as well and there are a lot of people hunting here in Finland.

The most annoying thing has occurred, I have come down with an eye infection in only my left eye, and my left eye is swollen and it hurts to just keep it open, which would be the normal thing to do when being awake. This is an odd thing that happens to me now and then and it is only the left eye that gets infected and swollen. Guess I now have to think about getting a doctors appointment for this afternoon to sort this thing out before it gets out of hand and affects my eye sight permanently.

With a bang

Well the annual bear hunting season sure got off with a bang and it was covered in the media in a bigger way than normal here in Finland as one of the hunters was attacked by the bear he had just shot and ending up in a wrestling competition with the bear. Luckily the hunter he survived without any severe injuries and the bear finally died of its’ wounds. Quite strikingly the place where it all happened is called Kontiolahti, which would be translated into about “Bear Bay” if I have got it right.

The warm weather continues even though the night now are beginning to be chillier and there is more moisture in the air as it is turning towards autumn, now I am just waiting for the leaves to turn into all these beautiful orange, red and yellows to get some beautiful photos again. My favourite season definitively is autumn, not only because of the colours or the freshness and crispiness in the air I love so much but mostly because we all get back into our normal routines again after the summer vacations. The normal daily rut continues as always before and I can change from this cold salad food into making more soup which I just love, and I can not eat hot food ion warm weather, so hot soup requires cold weather, or at least some rain.

Anyway, I am quite proud that a few of my photos have been published on the net in other people’s stories. I guess my writing still has some way to go before I can call myself a writer but I am working at that all the time.

Smog in Finland!

The forest fires are really growing into a major health issue here in Finland.

The nearest forest fires are on the other side of the Russian border (there might be other I am not aware of) and the smoke still drifts hundreds of kilometres inland! The weather being hot you would like to leave the windows ajar but can’t because of the smell of a smoke! And you can’t see anything because of the smog. Imagine smog here in Finland in the middle of Helsinki or on a lake in the middle of nowhere! Looks like rain on the horizon but smells like fire.

Being out in the woods and having a little fire, well, that is nice and cosy and even smells nice. But having the smoke around you at all times is not fun anymore. Guess we all live in a smoke-sauna for the time being.

At least they promised a possibility of rain this week and I really hope that goes for the eastern border too!