We have the concealed weapon law in my state too. I am frightened however by the states (including mine) that allow concealed weapons in bars.

This does not work. Plain and simple.

If your regular citizen is armed, then criminals are atleast as well armed as they. So instead of risking being mugged, youre at risk of being robbed at gun point.

Also "fear of guns" creates even more desperation. Desperate people dont think. Rather they just use what they have....which is in your case guns.

Cant really comment here. The response time of finnish police is quite good despite the usual nagging. Again, cant see how having guns would improve anything. If criminals escape - the police will just catch them later. Its not necessary for the everyday citizen to try keeping them in scene by gunpoint and risking firefight and actual casulties.

What i just mentioned. It doesnt really matter if the criminals escape, if you saw them - they will be caught. ESPECIALLY ON COUNTRYSIDE. Where would the escape to?

...i do however understand wild animal concerns, but even that would depends from location to location (ie in finland wild animals arent exactly huge problem these days).


I believe your regular person isnt well trained enough, has no idea how to be "careful" not to shoot through wall nor has the nerves to keep his/her nerves in order in actual threat situation. Being able to lock n load and then shoot at target in range has zippo do with self defence situation. Or situation you THINK is self defence. There are plenty enough nervous people shooting their family members, thinking them robbers. If US new are to be believed that is.

Concerning the shootings, i can say that this sort of thing didnt happen in finland until they happened often enough in rest of the world and were thus "advertised". The idea of going somewhere and shooting people randomly was simply out side of thinking of anyone. Absolutely unthinkable. I am not very fond of that cultural export.

That's my only real concern with firearms out in public. Booze can make the best person stupid especially with a firearm. Maybe we should have a penalty if your caught drunk with a firearm. Sort of like driving drunk. If your caught you could lose your weapons license get thrown in jail with a monetary penalty.

@iippo
Are you blaming the entire world for your country's psychopath? And a Google search shows that Finland has had other mass shootings. Like:
http://www.slideshare.net/TomiKiilakoski/perspectives-on-school-shootings-in-finland
According to most states' laws you can carry one into a bar, but can't drink. But how the heck are you supposed to monitor that especially when the gun is concealed?

1) Criminals usually use weapons that are neither registered nor would be legal to own in the first place. That means that legal gun owners have no bearing on whether or not a criminal owns a weapon. We could decide to make all guns illegal and still have the same level of crime or possibly worse.

2 and 3) Police do not always catch the bad guy. The bad guy might want to do some real bad things to your family. I concede one probably shouldn't live that far from civilization, but sometimes that's not an option and those people deserve a chance to defend themselves if authorities have to take time to get to them.

4) I sort of agree with you here. I believe people should treat these weapons with far more respect than they do. They are designed for only one thing in mind (well two if you hunt animals with them) and need to train with them and handle them very carefully.

5) A sad state of affairs indeed. I certainly hope things like this don't happen in your country. I believe most of these problems are from both a rise in population and not applying the law appropriately to certain people getting reported in (as I mentioned it's my opinion our country has a semi two class system when it comes to law application and it comes to bite us in the ass on occasion). All that being said I believe we all have a right to defend ourselves with a weapon. The right should come with responsibility in the form of training. As I told one poster we should not have people running around with weapons drunk.

Have you wondered why the USA criminals are apparently quite well armed compared to EU criminals?

Sure there are plenty of guns in Finland. I cant remember the actual statistics and am too lazy currently to look for them - but quite often Finland is ranked among one of the most heavily armed nations (people:guns ratio). Sure police are recovering guns from motor bike gangs and such - but the guns arent really actually used by criminals. Its very rare that police have to use guns either. If police shoots with intention of hitting someone in Finland, it goes to news. its that rare.

This "might do something bad to your family" is sort of thing that is exceedingly super rare here. So from my finnish point of view this is not really concern. here.

Pink "Hello Kitty" guns for kids are sign of something...

We have had i think two "serious" school shootings (9 and 11 dead) and couple where died around two i think. Then there was one bombing by student in certain shopping mall i went into daily - 7 dead (including the maker) and 80 injured or so. But that last one has never been quite confirmed if it was intentional or not.

Decade ago or so some woman shot few men in shooting range and there has been one "sniper" as well who shot couple random guys before he got caught on the spot.

Gun crimes in Finland are mostly suicides (native finns), whole family killings - every few years some desperate man (usually, but not always) shoots his family including himself, are "finnish" gypsy families fighting each other.

Typical the gun is either hunting rifle or shotgun.

First of which about Australia and rape:

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime/sexual%20assault.html

If you want further detail, I suggest checking nationmaster.com but be warned since they do some mislabeling like calling a gun-related death a "murder with firearm" regardless of context and be also warned since you'd have to do some math on your own to calculate rates and per capita since the website has gotten more messed up as I've been using it.

As for guns helping to prevent rape:

http://www.wistv.com/story/15140008/female-motel-clerk-kills-robber

Under the laws of Australia, the UK, and Mexico (has stricter gun laws than both the US and Canada); that female motel clerk would have been raped at knife point since the politicians believe that would be a better alternative to adding the death of a fugitive to the statistics of "gun deaths" and "gun homicides."

As for Switzerland, I mentioned it because if someone really wanted to, he could grab his standard issue guns and commit murder but Switzerland has a lower violent crime rate than the US, Russia, and the UK so apparently having physical access to guns and ammo does not make you a murderer or a robber. That's what I was pointing out to people. I was basically say quit blaming inanimate objects other than defective psychiatric drugs and focus on the perpetrator.
First of which, federal reports already showed a declining violent crime rate even as private gun sales soared and gun crime rates have actually decline as well. This implies that the legal guns at gun stores are normally not the ones that end up in the wrong hands and perhaps it's time to quit picking on the so called "gun culture." Just because someone respects firearms and sees value in them does not make that person a nutcase or a criminal.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/05/14/disarming-realities-as-gun-sales-soar-gun-crimes-plummet/

Second, there is no "be all and end all" solution to criminals both violent and not. I am pointing out that letting people legally carry and own weapons is perhaps not a bad idea afterall and perhaps it's time to stop blaming guns and start looking at other things like lousy psychiatric drugs and the actual perpetrators.

I get amused when people claim violent crimes have nothing to do with excessive gun control policies. Armed robberies rose after UK's official ban on handguns and there are still armed criminals roaming about.

READ THE SOURCE FOR ARTICLE BEFORE JUDGING THE REPORTER

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/crime-courts/three-arrested-after-15-year-old-girl-shot-dead-in-east-london-house.23774574
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-154307/Gun-crime-soars-35.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/two-muslim-converts-guilty-killing-uk-soldier-lee-rigby-london-f2D11775017

By the way, one of the perpetrators responsible for the death of Lee Rigby had an illegal revolver resulting in armed police getting sent to shoot the three bastards in the legs.

Norway have less violent crime that US or Switzerland, and not even the police is armed there. We have been selected "The Happiest Nation" at least three times by the UN, though :)

Well, ive been army to myself and i was not bad shot. As ive stated before, personally i am not really opposed to guns as such. Properly handled, stored and maintained guns are safe.

However, when i move from personal pov to society level, i am just not seeing how in US for example guns are making everything safer.

Just as i cannot see how for example Finland could more safe by adding more guns.

In my eyes the Average Joe just does not need handgun with serious killing power. Even practice guns kill, so whats the point of .44, .357 and such which definitely penetrate alot of walls and such hitting god knows whom else? Whats the point of civilians having semiautomatic weapons in the first place? Revolvers would be marginally safer - but then again, its usually the first bullet that kills.

As for picking one news story about preventing rape - well, there are plenty of news telling stories about kids killing their brothers and sisters, hunters "hunting" other hunters, dogs(!) killing their owners (with guns) etc. A single case is not worth much really.

If i find you news showing case where someone kills raper with knife: would you be willing to swap guns for knives?

I would be very interested in seeing statistical data about guns preventing crimes. But i suppose that would be hard to collect in sensible manner.
I have this feeling, that in Norway and Finland atleast the police starts by talking - and finishes the like that almost always, without point the gun at anyone.

...meanwhile in the US -every- police knows that pretty much any of their "customers" has high chance of having gun - so they dont really take risks and either point their own gun considerably easier or otherwise forcibly subdue and handcuff them.

This is ofcourse just totally guessing on my part and i could be way off the mark.

...meanwhile in sweden

Until a couple years ago, every serviceman used to keep a sealed box of 50 rounds at home (illegal to open) but all this ammo is now kept in Army storage. Keeping any military ammo at home is illegal, and when you go to the shooting range they make you sign a paper detailing the exact number of rounds you're going to shoot to make sure no one stashes up on ammo in their home. It's (allegedly, I haven't tried) surprisingly easy for anyone to steal ammo, hand grenades and even RPG rounds during Army training but fortunately one never hears of the latter two being illegally used and as far as gun deaths in the country, over 90% are suicides and only about 49% of those are done with service weapons. These aren't the newest statistics, now that military ammo is no longer stored at people's homes the number of suicides using service firearms is lower.
Anyway, I don't think the number of firearms in one country would mean the same in another country. In a civilized country, I'd expect less killing to occur with the same number of guns in private hands (legal and/or illegal) as compared to a 3rd world country (and bad neighborhoods in 1st world countries) where people have less to lose and the inhibitions to use a gun are much lower. I don't have a fundamental problem with open carry for law abiding permit carrying citizens in a 1st world country but if that is the case anywhere I'll be 100% sure to avoid any place where alcohol is being consumed (bars etc). In fact, places with lots of alcohol consumption are best avoided even if there are no guns there.

One question though, why is this thread going into the gun debate thing, has nobody noticed the car of that guy? I've always had a suspicion that BMW drivers are creepy, no? **

**PS: my suspicions aren't based on stereotypical BMW driver jokes which have replaced the Manta driver jokes from the 1990s. Rather, my suspicions are based on the behavior of actual BMW drivers on the street. For some reason that I can't explain yet, BMW drivers have been -in my experience- the ones least likely to give right of way to pedestrians. Not all BMW drivers but especially the ones who install special rims on their car. I just don't understand it all.

Video games are just relatively new and easy to blame stuff on. They use to say that violent TV caused stuff like this to happen. But if you look at the people who do it, they have a history of problems that went neglected until they snap.

So you don't have any recent statistics then? Or any statistics comparing rape, or sexual assaults, between Australia and the US? You were just making up that fact?

OK… so guns have prevented one rape in the US? Thats it?

http://gbtimes.com/world/two-accused-planning-kill-50-students-helsinki

The were caught when they tried to recruit someone, who told his friend, who in turn told police.

There is fine line between "thinking" and "planning". If person is acting in very unstable manner, i think its absolutely normal to check if that person is more or less sane (at the very least).