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Two things... First, as a German, we do have discussions about police violence. But they mostly relate to using water throwers and brute force. Demonstrations i
by gurkendoktor 14y ago
Two things... First, as a German, we do have discussions about police violence. But they mostly relate to using water throwers and brute force. Demonstrations in Berlin are known to look like a cliché British football match sometimes.
Second, I looked up the list of countries by firearm deaths. Any Finnish folks here to explain what's going on there?! I didn't expect any European country to be so high up on the list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re...
- DanBC 14y agoHigh suicide rate? Finland 6.86 0.86 5.78 0.12 1994 Krug 1998 N. Ireland 6.82 5.24 1.34 0.12 1994 Krug 1998 Switzerland 6.4 0.58 5.61 0.13 1994 Krug 1998 (Country, total firearm related death rate, homicides, suicides, accidental, date, source.) I'm avoiding politics - here's a link about the Northern Ireland "troubles" to explain the high murder rate. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/5097948.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/5097948.stm)
- sdfjkl 14y agoInteresting shift between homicides and suicides. Suicide by offending an armed drunk?
- yason 14y agoWell, it says most of them are suicides. That's certainly true. Most of the rest are homicides: Finland as a country is filled with weapons (registered for shooting at the range or for hunting) and when you mix that with excess alcohol consumption there's always someone who gets pissed at a family member, a relative, or a drinking buddy and as things escalate someone goes to get his hunting rifle.
- exDM69 14y agoI'm from Finland, maybe I can give some background. Finland has a high rate of gun ownership due to popularity of hunting and farmers, who use guns to keep unwanted wild animals at bay. In addition to that, there was a fair amount of guns left over from WWII, and there was a well-known case where guns where stashed away to form a resistance militia in case of foreign invasion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_Cache_Case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_Cache_Case). In addition to that, Finland's southernmost tip is roughly at 60 degrees northern latitude, roughly at the level of Anchorage, Alaska. That means that 3 months of the year, this is a cold, dark and desolate place where the only thing you can do is get drunk and wave guns at your friends and/or yourself in a state of delirium tremensis. Also note that firearms-related suicide is far more common than homicide, in that Wikipedia statistic it's about 6 times more suicides than homicides. (The Finns prefer to stab each other and shoot themselves). It is a very rare occasion that a police officer fires a gun at a person in Finland.
- Tichy 14y ago"a cold, dark and desolate place where the only thing you can do is get drunk and wave guns at your friends and/or yourself in a state of delirium tremensis" Luckily there are computer games now :-)
- wookietrader 14y agoOr you can start programming on an operating system during that period, like a certain Linus did.
- pimeys 14y agoOr you can move to a warmer and lighter place, like tens of thousands of Finns did. Even Linus.
- chrismealy 14y agoPortland? Only barely.
- pimeys 14y agoWell, it's more south than Berlin, where I'm currently living. Even Berlin has 2-3 more months of summer and no completely black winter compared to Helsinki.