A young boy fatally shot a 12-year-old student and wounded two others at a school in Finland on Tuesday, police said, a rare act of violence by a child in a country that changed gun laws after school shootings but where gun ownership remains widespread.
Police said they arrested a suspect, also 12, who had a handgun, about an hour after arriving at the Viertola school in the city of Vantaa, about 10 miles north of Helsinki. He is charged with murder and attempted murder, police said.
As is customary in criminal investigations in Finland, police have not released the suspect’s name.
“We as a society have learned from previous sad school shootings,” national police chief Seppo Kolehmainen told a news conference — but added, “We failed to prevent the act in this sad event.”
“We’ll find out later why,” he said.
Finland tightened its gun laws after two school shootings in 2007 and 2008 that killed 20 people, including the attackers. Those shootings have inspired a heated debate about gun laws in a nation of hunters and gun enthusiasts.
A law introduced in 2011 raised the age limit for gun ownership to 20, made it mandatory for applicants to pass a proficiency test and added a requirement that doctors report anyone they deem unfit to own a gun.
However, Finland still has one of the highest rates of firearm ownership in Europe, according to the 2018 Small Arms Survey, conducted by the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
According to Finnish law, firearms licenses can only be issued to people who can demonstrate “an acceptable purpose of use” and are deemed fit based on their health and behaviour.
It was unclear how the student in Tuesday’s shooting obtained the handgun, but police said the gun was licensed to a close relative of the suspect.
Valtteri Mannila, a Vantaa resident who was on the school grounds with friends after Tuesday’s shooting and whose younger brother attends the school, told Yle, Finland’s national broadcaster, “Something has to be done so that this happens again – that a student can walk into a school with a gun.”
While Finland has a higher rate of firearm-related deaths per 100,000 residents than other Nordic countries, according to the World Population Review, the number is still much lower than in the United States.
Jukka Savolainen, a Finn who is a professor of criminology at Wayne State University in Detroit, said Finland’s high rate of gun ownership has more to do with the country’s hunting culture and sporting habits than the need for self-defense.
Kimmo Nuotio, a professor of criminal law at the University of Helsinki, said Finland has strict limits on how a firearm should be stored.
“How could the gun be held in such a way that a small person could pick it up?” asked.
Prime Minister Petri Orpo said at a press conference that, especially given the young age of the attacker and the victims, “the shooting incident at the Viertola school is deeply shocking and leaves you speechless.”