Firearm News
Finland,Ukraine,Sweden,Denmark,Netherlands
Firearms Supplied to Ukraine Found in Crime in Scandinavia
2 November 2022
YLE (Finland)
Organised crime is growing in Finland and there is a strong demand for weapons. Routes and connections from Ukraine to Finland are already in place. The police are hoping for resources to deal with the increasing workload caused by the war in Ukraine.
Soldiers carry weapons in the woods.
Europol, the European police agency, has warned that international criminals are trying to smuggle weapons from war-torn Ukraine to various EU countries. Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba /... (GunPolicy.org)
Ukraine,Netherlands,Sweden,Finland,Germany,Poland,United States,Russia
NATO Countries Pour Weapons Into Ukraine
2 March 2022
New York Times
The Dutch are sending rocket launchers for air defense. The Estonians are sending Javelin antitank missiles. The Poles and the Latvians are sending Stinger surface-to-air missiles. The Czechs are sending machine guns, sniper rifles, pistols and ammunition.
Even formerly neutral countries like Sweden and Finland are sending weapons. And Germany, long allergic to sending weapons into conflict zones, is sending Stingers as well as other shoulder-launched rockets.
In all,... (GunPolicy.org)
Gun crime is on the rise in Sweden
24 July 2021
Economist
In late may a throng of a hundred or so young men, most of them from African or Middle Eastern minorities, started fighting in a square in Hjallbo, a suburb of Gothenburg, Sweden's second city. Members of rival gangs seem to have started the scrap over the theft of a moped. Two days later a man in a nearby grocery shop was shot in the back of the head, thought to be as an act of revenge for the gangland battle. Then a policeman in Biskopsgarden, another suburb of the... (GunPolicy.org)
26 June 2021
Spectator (Sweden)
The shots were fired at 1pm on a Sunday, in spite of a heavy police presence at the scene. A 44-year-old shop owner was killed by a bullet to the head. The murder victim was a hard-working man who was trying to make a better life for his family. Now he is dead: another victim of Sweden's gun-violence epidemic.
On 28 May, two days before the shooting, riots had broken out in the same neighbourhood, the immigrant area of Hjällbo (pronounced 'Yel-boo') in Gothenburg, as... (GunPolicy.org)
Sweden's Gun Violence Rate Has Soared Due to Gangs,
26 May 2021
Guardian
Sweden is the only European country where fatal shootings have risen significantly since 2000, leaping from one of the lowest rates of gun violence on the continent to one of the highest in less than a decade, a report has found.
The report, by the Swedish national council for crime prevention (BRA), said the Scandinavian country had overtaken Italy and eastern European countries primarily because of the violent activities of organized criminal gangs.
"The rate in... (GunPolicy.org)
Fewer Gun Owners but More Hunting Weapons in Sweden
12 February 2020
Jakt & Jägare
It is often claimed in the debate that Sweden has about 600,000 legal gun owners. That is not true, according to the weapons register. Jakt & Jägare has ordered a run of the register from the Police. The trend is that there are fewer and fewer gun owners, but there are licenses for more and more weapons, mainly for hunting.
At the time of running the weapons register on 1 February, 552,554 people had one or more weapons licenses.
Since 2018, there are 4,519 fewer... (GunPolicy.org)
The Wave of Explosions Rocking Sweden's Cities
25 January 2020
Guardian
The first thing Daniel Georén registered was a cacophony of car alarms. It was 2am, and everyone in the attractive cobbled street where he lives in Malmö, Sweden, had been jolted awake by a giant explosion.
"The blinds shot up because of the pressure, and straightaway there was a small crowd of neighbours outside," the 40-year-old wine merchant told the Observer a week after the blast.
The damage was still there to see: the door to his backyard had been blown off,... (GunPolicy.org)
What Do We Know About Violent Crime In Sweden?
28 October 2019
Local (Sweden)
Has there been a rise in the number of explosions and shootings? Here's a look at what we do and don't know about violent crime in Sweden.
How much violent crime happens in Sweden?
In 2018, statistics from the National Council on Crime Prevention (Brå) showed there were 108 cases of deadly violence, a slight decrease from 2017 when there were 113 cases. The 2018 figure worked out as 1.06 incidents of deadly violence per 100,000 inhabitants of Sweden, and since 2002... (GunPolicy.org)
Rise In Gang Violence Across Sweden
4 July 2019
Local (Sweden)
Honour, debts, and prestige are serving as the pretext for an increasing number of deadly shootings that challenge the ideals of equality and social harmony on which modern Sweden was built.
"You strengthen your own gang by eliminating an external threat and you gain prestige," Eddy Paver, a reformed former member of a biker gang, told AFP.
Paver was long willing to pay the ultimate price in order to "belong" to a criminal gang which required absolute loyalty from its... (GunPolicy.org)
Sweden Calls for Tighter Penalties for Arms Smuggling
5 May 2019
Vägen ut
A black car rolls up a shot is fired from a gun and a young man falls to the ground. Another fatal shooting added to the statistics and another family losing a loved one. A total of 45 people lost their lives in fatal shootings last year, with the most deaths in the Southern Region and the most shootings in the Stockholm area.
The number of fatal shootings continues to rise and the prognosis looks bleak. Fatal violence has been declining for a long time. But the trend... (GunPolicy.org)
This is Where Most Gun Owners Live in Sweden
14 March 2019
SVT Nyheter
According to figures from the news agency Siren, five municipalities in Norrbotten end up at the top when the number of gun owners is compared with the population.
In Arjeplog, for example, more than one in three inhabitants has a weapons license, which can be compared with Malmö, where every fifty inhabitants have one. After Arjeplog comes Storuman, Sorsele and then Jokkmokk. In Jokkmokk, 29 percent of the inhabitants have a gun license.
[Graphic: Gun ownership by... (GunPolicy.org)
Weapon-dense Sweden Does not Have the United States' Problems
10 October 2017
Goteborgs-Posten
Did you know that Sweden is one of the world's most weapon-proof countries? Neither did I, but given the US debate on gun control after the Las Vegas massacre, it's interesting.
So I read on.
In total, there are about two million legal weapons in Sweden, which sounds like a lot, but has an undramatic explanation: The Swedish hunting tradition. Hunting weapons account for 80 percent of all weapons. The amount of weapons is also increased by the fact that shooting... (GunPolicy.org)
Sweden Allows Only Responsible People to Have a Gun Licence
8 August 2016
Vox (USA)
Twenty years ago, I headed to Sweden for a sabbatical year to study the country's attitudes toward hunting. As a responsible hunter, I brought my own guns — an old 12-gauge shotgun and a Remington .30-06 — because I didn't want to miss a shot or wound an animal using unfamiliar, borrowed firearms.
As a sociologist I thought that bringing my own firearms would give me some firsthand experience with European gun laws. That happened sooner than I expected.
My... (GunPolicy.org)
United States,Sweden,United Kingdom,Australia,Japan,Switzerland,Israel,South Africa
Americans Face Extreme Difficulty Exporting Their Guns
27 April 2016
Wall Street Journal, Blog
When American Tom Heberlein tried to import his firearms to Sweden, he got as far as his transfer in the U.K. before it started to become complicated. There, despite having the correct paperwork, a U.K. customs official said: "You can't have these guns."
And thus began Mr. Heberlein's global gun education.
Although Mr. Heberlein did, after a lot of negotiation, finally get his guns through U.K. customs and in to Sweden, the entire experience created a hassle he hadn't... (GunPolicy.org)
Millions of Weapons in Sweden - Most in the North
25 August 2015
Sveriges Radio AB
[Editor's note: Translated by GunPolicy.org from Swedish into English]
[Translated summary: Sweden's 9.7 million inhabitants have barely two million licensed weapons. The National police and SCB's new statistics for the first half of this year have been released. The number of weapons has been divided among the country's seven new police regions and the vast majority of weapons are hunting weapons. There are licences for 900,000 rifles and 640,000 shotguns in the... (GunPolicy.org)
New Slovakia Law to Limit Gun Smuggling to Sweden
5 July 2015
Local (Sweden)
Sweden's comparatively strict weapons laws ensure that authorities have a tight control on registered arms.
But after a weapons amnesty conducted in 2013, police established that a surprising number of illegal firearms were in circulation in Sweden.
Last year 115 firearms were seized by the Swedish customs authorities and it was revealed that large proportion of these had been bought over the internet from Slovakia, where the law regarding plugged - or deactivated -... (GunPolicy.org)
Swedish Gun Amnesty Sees 15,000 Firearms Surrendered
30 December 2014
Local (Sweden)
Thirty-six tonnes of ammunition and over 15,000 weapons were given up in the first nationwide weapons amnesty for seven years.
Sweden's National Police Board carried out the three-month drive early last year, but officers only released the final results on Tuesday.
Sweden has only had two other amnesties, the most recent in 2007 - when 13,000 firearms were handed over by the public together with 14 tonnes of ammunition - and in 1993, when there were 17,000 firearms... (GunPolicy.org)
Teachers in Sweden Get Training to Handle School Shootings
9 June 2014
Local (Sweden)
Swedish school teachers will soon be required to learn about school shootings, the National Agency for Education announced on Monday.
Following fatal school shootings in Germany, Finland, and the US, the Swedish National Education Agency (Skolverket) has decided to educate all school personnel about violence and weapons at work.
"It's critical that the faculty have thought through this and are prepared," Annika Hjelm, director of education at the agency, told... (GunPolicy.org)
Man Dies After Twentieth Shooting in Swedish City During 2014
18 May 2014
Local (Sweden)
A man was shot dead in the Backa area of Gothenburg in western Sweden on Saturday evening with a further man sustaining gunshot wounds, the 20th incident of its kind in the city so far this year.
Both men, who are 25-years-old, are previously known to police.
"Several spent shells have been found and the crime scene had been cordoned off for a technical forensic investigation," said Ulf Lörstad at Västra Götaland police.
The police have opened a preliminary... (GunPolicy.org)
Almost One Third of 2013 Swedish Homicides Involved Guns
31 March 2014
Local (Sweden)
Last year testified to an upswing in deadly violence, new crime statistics revealed on Monday, as 87 people lost their lives to violence in Sweden, compared to 68 the year before. Almost one in three was shot.
Statistics collated by the National Crime Prevention Council (Brå) showed that 2013 was more violent than 2012, but over the longer term, fatal violence has gone down in Sweden. The statistics also included manslaughter.
"The number of cases of deadly violence... (GunPolicy.org)