Problem is in society, if you don't like certain band and if your opinions are not along with majority society (in this case other students) are not accepting him to join their 'gang'.
People should start to understand that there is no only one view to world and that if someone thinks differently about world it is not weird or anything like that.
If he would been accepted to 'gang' when he was young this problem would probably not happened.
Of course how he was rised as a kid plays quite big role, today many seem to be left alone and not rised at all, which of course is good route if you like to give a kid major problems.
Where I live here is many of families with kids of 10 or under, what I see daily is group of kids wrecking places, swearing and threatening bypassers etc, I have never seen any adult looking after them. So of course kids learn to play nice with parents but they are totally differnet in 'their world'. It is really not big step to such disaster from here.
edit: Oh yes, banning something is rather simpleminded solution, which really does not help anything, without access to gun he had used bomb, gas or knife of some sort. Banning guns would be cyring symptom not healing patient, same way as lowering tolerance of speedlimits and putting gazos to side of road (however these are mainly extra tax collectors). Things that really would matter would of course mean that people really should think but that is banned already in this country...
For those who think that cases like these are new, unexplainable, a fault of modern society etc., read this Wikipedia article:
Steven Pinker also wrote about it in his book "How the Mind Works". Columbine and Virgina Tech were nothing new, and nothing mysterious, it seems.
I disagree. Nutcases will choose the weapon that does the most damage, and that is the gun. If they can't get hold of any then they could choose a knife, axe, or other means, but their untrained hands will make more victims with a gun.
You should remember that this particular person was known to be above average intelligence, it means that he could be able to use bomb or gas with much more efficient way than your average Joe, which would result far worse destruction, imo.
With gun you can do just so much of destruction, however with other means mentioned you could easily wipe out several classrooms and even without alarming noises (gas), so that is why I think gun was better choice here as destruction was far more limited.
Getting poisonous not smelling gas is also rather easy, making bomb is perhaps even easier, nobody does not notice small brown box in classroom as there often is brown boxes in classrooms anyway, if he had rigged timer to those it would be more like 50 deaths easily.
So I believe that it is good that it was a gun and nothing far worse.
i think youre misinterpreting the motives behind school shootings which most likely are revenge for severe humiliation through bullying (obviously blaming it on video games, just as a sidenote not directed at you, is a much easier cop out than holding society and the parents of both the bullies and the shooters responsible)
the reason why i point this out is that they will probably choose to exact said revenge personally instead of in a way that requires considerable distance to their targets like bombs or toxic gas
Only hunting rifles and shotguns are sold to civilians because hunting is very popular in here, getting a legal handgun on the otherhand is pretty much impossible. I know many people who own guns but only one has a pistol aswell, he bought it in the 80's for executing sick animals on his farm.
But I suppose if you got right connections in bit city, you can get anything you want for right amount of cash.
No, it's rather easy to get a handgun as a "sport" weapon. I worked with few guys during the summer who owned several rifles and few handguns, all were made to competitive shooting, it's a sport you know. The gun used in the shooting yesterday was that kind of sport gun, .22 caliber handgun, and it does really show that it's easy to get one because he had one.
Of course, it's far more difficult than in the US where you just walk in to a store and point what you want.
There's no indication of personal revenge but not-so-reliable sources tell that one of the victims was homosexual, thus being "weak" in his opinion, the school principal and the doctor might have been "weak" because they help other people and so on. Might be that he randomly shot people but used some kind of selection while committing the killings.
Police told there were found 62 casings and another 300 cartridges (obviously on a packback or something), also he had put some petroleum around the 2nd floor but failed at firing it...
If he just wanted to kill lots of people, then bombs and gas would be better (if planned well). He could even make a getaway, and watch himself become famous on TV and in newspapers.
But if his motive was revenge then bombs and gas would be useless, because he would not have seen his victims die before his own eyes. I'm just guessing of course, but I think he wanted pure, bloody revenge for injustice done to him. Think of it as a way to save his face. And suicide is sortof logical then, because it's the surest escape from being punished for his deeds (= humiliation, again).
ROFL and we often find out it is reporters from US that will get facts wrong about Finland.
I can't quite get how that would even be possible, maybe story was given to some trainee or something? But how it still is up, certainly any average person can see that story is off by few miles.
Times really should take that article out and make some sort of explanation or their reputation will get huge hit, those mistakes in story are about as bad as claimin moon to be made of cheese.
Such a shame that something like this happens every now and then, and I can't begin to imagine the pain felt by the relatives of the innocent random victims.
The most troubling thing for me, though, is when the media breaks out into a frenzy. They have no qualms about publishing this killer's name, even though that is probably exactly what he wanted to happen. I just worry that the next mass-murderer is watching these reports and beginning to crave the kind of infamy that the media glady award these monsters.
Of course, we just can't really know for sure, problem is that people tend to act rather weird ways when emotions come to play, you really can't tell for sure about anything.
If person has been commencing act under strong emotional stage, then of course bombs and such would not be his choice, as planning is one of first things that goes down when working under emotions, or that is what I have noticed.
That is how it is with average Joe, but I doubt that this person did not act completely under emotion.
Those that go 100% emotion driven are not really big threat to anyone actually, it is rather limited what they can do, but those that are not doing things by emotion are far more dangerous as they can choose ways which are far more effective etc.