Few would guess Iceland if asked which country comes second to the United States when it comes to our gun culture. (RELATED: Blaming Guns for Violence Is Dumb … This Dumb).
Iceland is an extremely small country, with only about 330,000 citizens (for contrast, Tampa, Florida has about 350,000) on a landmass the size of Kentucky, but they have a gun culture that rivals ours in the U.S. when it comes to how prevalent firearms are in their small society.
About 25% of households in Iceland own a gun, compared to about a third of homes in the U.S. Gun ownership is often overstated in the U.S., as the oft-cited statistic that there are as many guns are people disguises the fact that nearly half of all firearms are owned by 3% of firearms owners.
According to a report I was surprised to see published in NBC News:
Iceland is the gun-loving nation that hasn’t experienced a gun-related murder since 2007. St. Louis, Missouri, which has a population slightly smaller than Iceland’s, had 193 homicides linked to firearms last year.
“There’s nothing wrong with the gun,” said Jóhann Vilhjálmsson, a gunsmith in Reykjavik, echoing a favorite argument of the National Rifle Association. “The gun kills nothing, you know? It’s the person who is holding onto the gun.”
The last gun killing here was 11 years ago, and there have only been four in the past two decades, according to GunPolicy.org, a project run by Australia’s University of Sydney.
NBC does editorialize a bit here, and point out that guns are owned more for the purpose of hunting in Iceland, rather than self-defense in the U.S. Regardless, that seems a bit obvious, since there aren’t many violent crimes one needs to defend themselves in a country as peaceful as Iceland (which could be argued is because of their high rate of gun ownership).
As for Iceland’s gun laws, while they are stricter than the U.S., the added hurdles are mainly due to the stricter background and mental health checks:
Candidates are examined by a doctor who checks they are in good physical and mental health. They have a meeting with the chief of police, who asks them why they want to own a gun and runs a background check to make sure they have no criminal record. Then comes the lecture, followed by a written test the next day that they have to pass with a grade of 75 percent or higher.
Overall, their gun laws really aren’t that much stricter than those we see in coastal States (with a few exceptions). Iceland is a reminder that it’s who owns the guns that’s the crucial factor in the gun debate, not how many guns there are. An angle not often examined is the role of stolen firearms in America’s gun violence.
Those who go through the legal process of obtaining a concealed carry permit in America commit crimes (including murder) at rates far below the national average. A study of concealed carry permit holders in Michigan found they commit gun crimes at the same rate as those in Japan, a nation with nearly no guns.
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