KAUHAJOKI, Finland (AFP) — Finland vowed Wednesday to toughen gun laws after a school massacre left 11 people dead, while the police faced scathing criticism for questioning the killer over a chilling YouTube warning only to release him on the eve of the tragedy.
Matti Juhani Saari, 22, burst into class on Tuesday morning, shooting dead eight female students and one male classmate as well as a male teacher, before setting the building ablaze and eventually turning the gun on himself.
Flags flew at half mast across Finland on Wednesday as the country observed a day of national mourning after its second horrendous school shooting in less than a year.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen travelled to the small southwestern town of Kauhajoki to meet the families of the victims and local officials.
Outside the white-brick vocational school, still cordoned off more than 24 hours after the tragedy, a couple of hundred candles flickered in the autumn sun and a single red rose lay on the ground.
Vanhanen reiterated that the Nordic country's gun laws would be significantly tightened following this second massacre.
"We will take a decision regarding a new law in a few months," he said.
The interior ministry later said legislation would be presented to parliament in early 2009 at the latest.
Finland has one of the world's highest gun ownership rates, ranking third behind the United States and Yemen, according to a study last year.
Finland has 1.6 million guns in circulation, two-thirds of which are hunting rifles, according to statistics released Wednesday by the interior ministry. In a country of just 5.3 million people, that is one gun for every third person.
Vanhanen said Finland was in the process of implementing a new European Union directive it had previously contested that raises the age for gun ownership from 15 to 18.
"But in this case it would not have (made a difference) because this guy was 22," he added.
In an eerily similar case, 18-year-old student Pekka-Eric Auvinen shot six students, a headmistress and a nurse before killing himself in a school in Jokela, north of Helsinki on November 7, 2007.
He, like Saari, had easily acquired a license for his .22 calibre handgun despite the fact that his obsession with violence was widely known.
Saari, a culinary arts student, had left behind two notes hinting at his motives for the rampage, police said.
He wrote that "he hated mankind and the human race and that he had been planning this since 2002," head of the police investigation Jari Neulaniemi told AFP.
The killer had also written "I want to murder as many people as possible," another police source said.
Finland's prosecutor general has launched an investigation into why police failed to prevent Tuesday's school shooting.
Police had questioned him just a day before the massacre about a video posted on YouTube showing him shooting his weapon at a firing range.
However, they deemed he was not enough of a threat to withdraw his gun license.
At least one opposition parliamentarian has demanded the resignation of the interior minister, who is ultimately responsible for police affairs.
Residents in Kauhajoki, some 360 kilometres (224 miles) from Helsinki, expressed anger and bitterness at the police's handling of the situation.
"I'm really shocked and very critical of the police. What does a person have to do to get the police to react?" asked Sirpa Myllyviita, 43.
"Who is the policeman who interviewed the killer? What does he think today? Does he feel good? If he had acted differently none of this would have happened and lots of lives would have been spared," she said.
The police officer in question, whose name was not given, was placed on sick leave at his own request, police said Wednesday.
Finnish media unanimously blamed the latest school massacre on the country's lax weapon laws, but also singled out Internet violence, rising individualism and even failures in the Finnish school system, which according to international assessments is the best in the developed world.
A day after Saari -- clad in a ski mask and black outfit -- marched into a classroom and shot his terrified classmates trapped inside, the inhabitants of this usually sleepy town of 14,000 people were searching for answers.
"Everything is good in Finland, the country has everything," asked Jari Huhtanen, 45, a factory floor manager. "So why?"
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