[3] Additionally, many reservists practice their skills using their own semi-automatic rifles and pistols after military service.
[7] Overall, legal gun ownership rate is similar to countries such as Sweden, France, Canada and Germany.
Estimates place the number of illegal, unregistered firearms between some tens of thousands and upwards of a million.
[10] Following the school shooting incidents in 2007 and 2008 in which the perpetrators used .22 caliber semi-automatic pistols, legislation regarding short firearms was considerably tightened in 2011.
Larger bore air weapons need a permit, unless the person already holds a firearms licence.
Ordinarily, this means a maximum of 20,000 rounds of ammunition (including loose primers) and 2 kg of gunpowder per household, with larger quantities requiring separate storage.
In local implementation, the major change to firearms users will be that self-loading rifle and pistol magazines with a capacity of more than 10 and 20 respectively will become more strictly controlled.
Any significant history with violence or other crime, substance abuse or mental health issues will cause the application to be rejected.
There is no waiting period as such, but in practice processing an application takes a minimum of several days, usually a few weeks.
Special legislation applies to these easily concealed firearms and they are not licensed for sporting purposes.
Some common pistols such as Glock 19 fall under this description, and are therefore generally unavailable to e.g. IPSC shooters in Finland.
Licences for such firearms can only be granted on a very limited basis and are essentially for recognized collectors and filming purposes only.
[29] The two school shootings in Jokela in 2007 and Kauhajoki in 2008 are by far the worst peacetime mass murders in Finland, with 8 and 10 victims, respectively.
In the aftermath police were blamed for being too lax in issuing licences, as neither perpetrator had any significant history with sports shooting.
Police defended their decision, stating that nothing suspicious had come up with the information available, so there was no reason to reject the application.
[33][34] Military service guns are stored by the Finnish Defence Forces, and are only given out during reservist training or mobilization.