No Stand Your Ground in Finland

Two men armed with knives broke into a home in Lempäälä, FInland. They strangled the 68-years old home owner and tried to break into his gun cabin. The home owner managed to escape the attackers and ran into his bedroom where he kept a loaded revolver. He shoot one of the attackers in the chest and pierced his lung. The attackers fled and the home owner followed them out and fired his gun still three times hitting the same man in the calf.

Now the home owner is charged with attempted man slaughter and gun law violation for keeping a loaded gun in the house. The gun it self was legal but it as not allowed to have a loade gun around in Finland. The home owner has plead guilty to gun law violation but says the shooting was self defence to protect his life.

The robbers were not known to the home owner. They had been tipped off by a third man about the several legal guns that the man kept in his house. Their target was to get the mans weapons.

The home owner says he believed the men were going to kill him. Their violent behavior (strangling him etc.), the fact that they were armed with knives and that the fact that he had recogniced the third man who had stayed outside led him to believe that his life was in danger.

The two men are charged with aggrevated trespassing and robbery. No assault charges were pressed. Nor were they charged of using a deadly weapon in a robbery.

The home owner is 68 years old. The man he shoot is 30. The other intruder is 58. The Finnish law basically states that you can not use more violence to fight off an attacker than what he is using against you. I'd like to know what could the 68-year-old have done to fight off the two younger men armed with a knife but to grab a fire arm. He probably could have managed the situation differently and hold the men at gun point until the police got there and avoid shooting after them when they were escaping. Even doing so he would have been charged anyway, since he was keeping a loaded weapon in his house for situations like this - which is a crime itself - and threatening the attackers with a fire arm is illegal when they only have a knife. When armed people break into your home you only have bad options in Finland.