As per estimates, Finland is in top ten when it comes to civilians owning guns.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country

Is it easy to own a gun here?

14 comments

  2. I wouldn’t say it’s easy, gotta go through background checks and what not.

    But yeah, we have had three school shootings, Raumanmeri school in 1981, Jokela in 2007, and Kauhajoki in 2008.

  4. Gaining licence for long-barrelled single-fire shotgun or rifle for hunting purposes is easy. Easily concealed handguns or self-loading rifles with high clip capacity are made difficult to obtain, so person that would only use it for mischief is more likely to lose interest before obtaining one. Unfortunate for responsible owners, but better this way.

  5. Three ways to get a firearm: Sports license (semi-auto rifles, pistols), hunting license (shotguns, rifles), or collectors license (pretty much anything).

    Collectors license is extremely hard to get.

    Hunting license requires you to pass a theory test, not very difficult all in all.

    Sports license for pistols and semi-auto rifles is probably what you’re asking about;

    – For that, you need to join a club, for example your local shooting club, or your reservist association (not sure if that’s what you call a militia), to join a club you need to go through a safety course on theory, and then a shooting test.

    Once you’ve joined, you need to go to the range using someone elses firearm (e.g, club-owned firearms), approximately 5 times within 12 months. You keep a record of all this. You then apply for a license to the police, show them your club-membership, and your activity at the shooting range (calibers you shot, how much you shot), and you show them a medical examination, as well as a psychological examination, and any additional resources that may help, for example, having your military experience completed (asepalvelus) is very, very useful.

    You are then interviewed by a police officer, where he asks you questions about gun ownership, e.g how do you store them, how do you transport them, etcetcetc, takes about 30mins. Then you get the decision later on, which as long as you have the requirements of range visits and medical papers, you will be given a permit.

    Sounds difficult, but if you want a rifle, you can get one. You just need to prove you know what you’re doing, and not some ego driven self-defense motivated lunatic.

    The biggest difference between europe and the US, is that gun ownership here has nothing to do with self-defense.

    The last school shooting, some 15 years ago, was done with a .22 pistol. Today, that guy would not be able to get the pistol as easily as he did back then, he was crazy.

    I think Finland is a great example of how you can own high-capacity assault-style weapons, unrestricted pistols, etc, and not really have a gun problem.

  6. There is/was a threat on our school like yesterday, now there are police in the school just chilling for the last couple days of school

  7. I’ve always found these statistics a bit hard to believe, since most people I know don’t own guns. Just some friends and relatives who hunt.
    I’d like to learn from the perspective of a gun owner. Could it be that hunters and sports shooters usually own multiple firearms and therefore the firearms per capita is high even though a minority are gun owners?

  9. Just a regular citizen’s perspective here, although gun ownership is very high in the country, it certainly isn’t very visible. It baffles me to think about open-carry laws in the us, because it would most likely be a national headline if someone entered a store with a rifle here. Our system promotes safety as there is a relatively low amount of corruption, therefore wanting to owning a gun for “safety”, especially in the cities, is next to unheard of.

  10. I did a little exercise: Since 2000, Finland has had two school shootings with a total death toll of 20: Jokela (2007) and Kauhajoki (2008). USA had 15 with a total death toll of 174. This excludes Columbine that happened in 1999 but the result doesn’t change all that much even if we include it.

    When you divide these numbers by current populations (USA 330 million, Finland 5.53 million), Finland has actually had almost seven times as many school shooting deaths per capita since 2000!

    What can we learn from this? Are we Finns murderous psychos? Did Finland do something right in 2010’s since there have been no school shootings since? Are these results meaningful at all since school shootings are so rare and we should be looking at overall gun violence instead?

    Also, if I messed up something in my napkin calculations, please let me know. Interesting result nevertheless.

    Sources:

    [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Finland](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Finland)

    [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_by_death_toll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_by_death_toll)

    *Edit: There’s good discussion in the comments and it seems defining what counts as a mass/school shooting has a massive impact on the analysis. Comparing overall gun violence statistics would probably be more productive. Thanks for the comments!*

  11. The largest modern day mass killing in Finland didn’t use any firearms. In 2002 young loner male and chemistry student killed 7 and wounded 164 using home made bomb in a shopping mall. [Myyrmanni bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myyrmanni_bombing)

    >In total seven died, two teenagers and a 7-year-old. 159 were injured, including 10 children. 66 victims required hospitalization with the remainder treated and released at the scene.

  12. The average Finn is much more civilized , mature and and sane than the average American of a certain party. Finnish enforcement laws reflect this maturity.

  14. Fairly easy. There are however multiple steps to owning a one and each gun must have a suitable purpose like hunting or sports.

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