The 12-year-old boy who opened fire at his school in Finland on Tuesday, killing a schoolmate and injuring two others, has offered an explanation for the shooting: He was bullied.
The police said the motive emerged during interviews with the student, who had transferred to his school, north of Helsinki, at the beginning of the calendar year. After the shooting, the police said, the boy also threatened students heading to another school.
The boy, who cannot be criminally charged because of his age, was placed in the custody of social welfare authorities, the police said.
“This incident is deeply upsetting,” Finland’s education minister, Anna-Maja Henriksson, said in an interview on Wednesday. “We have to do more in the society to prevent bullying.”
A number of public officials said it was too early to know exactly what set off the shooting, which resulted in the death of another 12-year-old boy and injuries to two girls of the same age. But many joined in calling for more concerted efforts to address mental health problems among young people, and to combat school bullying.
In the Finnish news media, one editorial called for “an iron grip on the sickness of children and young people,” and others demanded more assurances from the authorities about school safety. The Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat published guidelines to report bullying, because “the responsibility always lies with adults.”
A 2023 government survey showed that about eight percent of young people reported being bullied in Finland, an increase over the previous year.
“We have done a lot of things to make things better,” said Katri Kalske, a deputy mayor for education in the city of Vantaa, where the shooting took place, citing the introduction of lessons about children’s emotions and other initiatives.
“Sadly,” she added, “They haven’t.”
Tightening gun ownership laws has been all but absent from the debate in Finland, which has one of the highest rates of firearm possession in Europe.
Finland has about one gun for every three people, according to the 2018 Small Arms Survey, but its rate of firearms-related deaths is a small fraction of that in the United States, according to the World Population Review.
The discrepancy, experts say, stems from Finland’s tight regulations over who can obtain a weapon, and from the two countries’ contrasting cultures.
Finland’s extensive gun ownership is related to its deeply ingrained hunting culture and its sporting habits, they say, rather a sense that it is a fundamental right aimed at self-protection.
Permits for firearms can be granted only to people who can demonstrate “an acceptable purpose of use” and are considered fit based on their health and behavior. Many pistol and revolver owners must also prove that they continued practicing hunting or shooting sports to keep their license.
“In general our control is working quite well and gun safety is at a high level,” said Mika Lehtonen, the chief of firearms administration for the national police.
Still, questions remained over how a 12-year-old child gained control of a gun.
The police said that the weapon was a revolver that belonged to a close relative, and they were investigating how the child came to possess it. That could result in a violation for the licensed owner.