At lest nine students killed in a school-shooting at a vocational school not far from here. BBC news
Kauhajoki is only some 55 miles to the southeast from here were we live which makes it more frightening to me as a teenager parent than did the school-shooting in Jokela last year.
This is not the crowded urban district of the southern Finland or USA but a peacful rural area.
Something is definitely really wrong with the way we treat our youth nowadays. It's a fact that mental healthcare, especially for younger people, has been run down the last few years now when we are scrapping the idea of being a Nordic-type welfare country where the healthcare and education is run by the society.
Outsourcing, privatisation and plain scrapping of resources for healthcare and education is slowly taking its' toll...
And the politicians and the media are already blaming the internet.
What this gunman may have posted on the web is not the fault of internet itself, it is just another cry for help...
Light a candle for the poor souls tonite.
Update at 6 PM:
The number of victims is now raised to 10 and the shooter died in hospital later today, that makes the death toll 11. Three injured.
I searched the YouTube for "Kauhajoki" immediately when I heard of this shooting a while after 11 AM today and I found two videos of a guy handling and shooting with a Walther PP 22 but I did not mention it here earlier.
Now it is confirmed by the police that this guy on the videos is the shooter. The same videos have been rolling on the TV-news since I arrived at home.
The most cruel fact is that the shooter was interrogated by the police as late as yesterday when they got reports regarding the videos on the YouTube that were uploaded last Friday!
The police did not find anything alarming in the guys behavior and the licence for the weapon was not withdrawn and the weapon was not confiscated...
The policeman responsible for this action yesterday cannot be reached today according to the police force and local news.
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6 comments:
Oh Hans, what a terrible tragedy. I find it increasingly hard to come to terms with the deterioration in society today which leads to these dreadful events. What is going wrong with us all. It seems that the more we are restricted, controlled and watched by the authorities, the worse the violence and crime gets...it is both ironic and very worrying.
I agree that it is not the fault of the internet itself. The fact that he posted those videos was much more a symptom of other problems. I can well imagine the policeman who interviewed the gunman is having a job living with himself today too. How incredibly sad.
I will light a candle in my heart for the family, friends and community from which the children came.
That is horrible Hans. I don't know what is happening to our society in a whole. Seems out of whack all around the world. Crazy times. I shall keep them in my prayers.
hope you are well.
Hope all's well, Hans. How are the folk in Finland feeling about this now?
Hi Val,
It seems that the Finnish society is recovering from this dreadful incident by now and there is now discussed serious attempts to change the law regarding the procedure of who and why and at what age someone can retrieve a license to carry and use hand-guns like those used in the Jokela shootings last year and in Kauhajoki recently.
There are also discussions around the subject of mental health-care for youth and what could be done to improve that.
I hope all those discussions will lead somewhere now because all the discussions around those same issues after the Jokela shootings last year tended to go around in circles and ended up in a big nothing... :(
On the personal level it's going well and fast... :)
Ingela keeps me occupied with interior decorating issues at home and in between I'm knitting my guitar amplifier together while Ingela is knitting socks.
We are at quite good health though Lukas got struck by mononucleosis six weeks ago, now slowly recovering but still suffers from exhaustion and some elevated CRP and liver enzyme counts still.
How's life Hans?
Life is good, can't complain!
Or maybe "Can't Explain" :)
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