Total recall

In the coming months, the UK is set to enact a right to recall elected politicians. But the American example shows this may not be the boon to democracy it appears.

Recently, the disgraceful tale of a Scottish politician refusing to resign in the face of 23 (yes, 23) separate domestic abuse convictions has revived talk in the UK of that old populist hobby-horse – the right to recall.

Bill Walker, a Scottish National Party member of the Scottish Parliament (pictured below), was convicted last month of a series of domestic abuse offenses against three different ex wives and a stepdaughter over three decades.

Though he was expelled from the SNP after the conviction, for weeks Walker refused to vacate his seat – and there was nothing the SNP or the Scottish Parliament could do to make him leave. As the British media examined the bizarre situation, those who advocate establishing a citizen's recall law in the UK came out in force to argue that this disgraceful state of affairs makes their case.

Guns in Finland

Yesterday's school shooting in Finland are interesting to look at from an American perspective, considering that the United States has an extensive recent history with school shootings and gun control is such a controversial issue in the US. Finland provides an interesting illustration, when compared to its European neighbors, of the possible links between the availability of guns and the frequency of gun crime.

In the US, gun control advocates often point to Europe as an example of an area where it is much harder to get a gun, and conversely there is much less gun crime. This is generally true, in the UK for instance even the police don't carry guns - and I saw first hand how rare and serious crimes involving guns are when I saw the police response to my getting mugged in January.

But there is one major exception to the restrive gun laws in Europe, and that is Finland. In Finland it is actually quite easy to get a gun, and owning one is very popular. There are 1.6 million firearms in private hands in Finland, and the minimum age for owning one is only 15. Only the US and Yemen have higher civilian gun ownership.

Now after yesterday's shooting, which closely followed another horrific school shooting in Finland in the past year, the country's prime minister has called for gun laws to be tightened. Matti Vanhanen said today that Finland should consider banning private handguns.

"In terms of handguns that can easily be carried about, we have to think about whether they should be available for private people," Vanhanen said. "In my opinion, they belong on shooting ranges."

Eleven students died in yesterday's shooting, and nine died in a similiar shooting in the town of Tuusula. Both of the gunmen had valid licenses for owning a gun, and both were young men who had posted videos on youtube with their weapons before the shooting. After last year's attack the Finnish government said it would consider changing the gun ownership laws, but no change was ever made.

School shootings haven't been very common in Europe, but they have occured. Outside of Finland there have been only two major ones. There was one in Scotland in 1996 that preceded the Columbine shootings, and another one in Germany in 2002. Though Finland has had several school shootings, gun crime in the country is relatively rare (although crime in general in Finland is rare). According to goverment figures, 14 percent of homicides in Finland involve a firearm.

Like the United States, Finland has a long and deep connection with hunting and personal gun ownership. But unlike the United States, there is no way of interpreting Finland's constitution as guaranteeing the right to gun ownership, and there is no powerful gun lobby. It could be that having these two shootings so close to one another could be the catalyst.

More European VTech coverage

I thought I'd give a little round-up of the European coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting. There's been a lot of talk about Charlton Heston and the NRA (apparently people here were left with the impression, from "Bowling for Columbine," that he's one of the most powerful people in America). He keeps coming up on radio and TV coverage. Everyone is also mentioning the 2004 expiration of a 10-year ban on semi-automatic weapons under the then Republican-controlled Congress.

"Only the names change—And the numbers," read a headline in the Times of London. "Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?"

The French daily Le Monde said the regularity of mass shootings across the Atlantic was a blotch on America's image.

"It would be unjust and especially false to reduce the United States to the image created, in a recurrent way, from the bursts of murderous fury that some isolated individuals succumb to. But acts like this are rare elsewhere, and tend to often disfigure the 'American dream.'"

Virginia Tech massacre

Wow, what a day. At work today I saw some short items coming over the wires starting in the early afternoon about a shooter at Virginia Tech, but even by the time I left work they were still reporting just one death. I went to the grocery store, and by the time I got back and turned on the telly and I find that actually 33 people have been killed and many more have been injured.

This thing is so crazy, and I can't believe it's now 11pm and they still don't know whether there was one shooter or two, whether the two shooting sprees at the two different buildings were related, or even who the dead are. The scale of the killings is difficult to grasp, but what is equally unbelievable is how the school allowed this to happen. What we know now is there was a shooting incident at a dorm at 7am, two people were shot and the shooter was on the loose. The school decided to lock down, and then for some reason, before the shooter was caught, they rescinded the lock down and told everyone to go to class. Then somehow two hours later the shooter, with at least two large guns and tons of ammunition, got to the other side of campus, entered an engineering building and killed 31 more people. And this is after multiple bomb threats were called into the school last week.

It is now the worst mass shooting in American history.