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Finland’s Spree Killings Trigger Gun Control Debate

Robert Farago - comments No comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1bYPTci3xk

Last New Year’s Eve, Ibrahim Shkupolli stabbed his ex-lover, gunned down four of her colleagues at a Finnish shopping mall, and then turned the gun on himself. Shkupolli fired 10 shots from a pistol that had been stolen from a gun shop in Norway in 1990. He was an Albanian immigrant, who’d been denied Finnish citizenship after being convicted for violence, property and firearm crimes. Despite the fact that Shkupolli’s murderous rampage lies well outside the Finnish norm, it’s triggered legislative action to make it even harder—if not impossible–for a legal citizen to obtain a firearm. Which they can’t carry concealed, anyway. Perhaps it has something to do with previous spree killings; the gun control debate first entered the political mainstream after two school shootings in 2007 and 2008, where gunmen murdered a total 18 pupils and staff.

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