Finland defends gun availability

HELSINKI, Finland — A teenage killer's deadly school rampage has put Finns on the defensive about their relationship to guns.

With 1.6 million firearms in private hands, the Nordic nation is an anomaly in Europe, lagging behind only the U.S. and Yemen in civilian gun ownership, studies show.

The government said Friday it would raise the minimum age for buying guns from 15 to 18 but insisted there was no need for sweeping changes to gun laws shaped by deep-rooted traditions of hunting in the sub-Arctic wilderness.

"If you look at the rate of homicides with firearms (in Finland), the figure is very low," Interior Ministry spokesman Ilkka Salmi said. "People using guns are hunters. They live in rural areas. It's part of the life over there."

According to a government study in 2002, 14 percent of homicides in Finland are gun-related. In the U.S., nearly 67 percent of murders reported to police in 2002 were committed with a firearm, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

International gun-control activists have urged the Finns to rethink their laws in the wake of Wednesday's tragedy.

Finns are sensitive to their international image and often complain their country is portrayed as a gloomy northern outpost of Europe, where long dark winters drive people to binge drinking, suicide or random outbursts of violence.

Wednesday's bloodshed did little to help. Pekka-Eric Auvinen, described by police as a bullied 18-year-old outcast, opened fire at his high school in southern Finland. He killed six students, a school nurse and the principal before ending his own life with a gunshot to the head.

"There are all kinds of people living in Finland, like everywhere else," said Tero Aaltonen, a customer in a Helsinki gun shop. "But I rather think it's the influence of the media and all the things people are exposed to that might make someone do a thing like that."

Auvinen, who had no previous criminal record and belonged to a shooting club in central Helsinki, shot the victims with a .22-caliber pistol that he bought from a local gun store days before the attack.

Police revealed Friday that Auvinen had settled for the pistol after being denied a license for a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun.